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SECRETARY BAKER AND PRIVATE CARLISLE BABCOCK 

Headquarters 2nd Division, March 20, 1918 



SECRETARY BAKER 
AT THE FRONT 



BY 
RALPH A. HAYES 

PBIVATi: 8ECBETART TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 
PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 






Copyright, 1918, by 
The Centuey Co. 



PulUshed, September, 1918 



OCT -2 1918 
©CL\5i)8633 



TO 

FREDERICK P. KEPPEL 

THIRD ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR 
VENIT, VIDIMUS, VICIT 



FOREWORD 

Mr. Hayes has written an account of 
my visit to France, and I am privileged 
by his publishers to write a brief intro- 
ductory word. This I can do with 
great freedom now, because Mr. Hayes 
has ceased to be my private secretary, 
and become one of that great company 
of khaki-clad soldiers who are carrying 
the message of America to the battle- 
fields of Europe and demonstrating that 
virility and vigor which free institutions 
have bred into the man-power of the 
United States. 

But I am interested, in the first place, 
to make an observation of a general 
character about private secretaries, for 
I began my own life in that relationship, 
and have always had an interest in the 

vii 



viii Foreword 

qualities which make men succeed in it. 
My own experience was brief, happy 
and wonderfully instructive, as I had 
the pleasure of serving William L. 
Wilson, the scholar in politics, for 
something over a year of his term as 
Postmaster-General. The opportunity 
came when I was very young, so that it 
was a post-graduate course to me, both 
because of its associations with a 
knightly gentleman, and because of its 
contact with large business affairs. 

I am sorry to say I have no recollec- 
tion that would justify my believing 
that I was a very useful or very suc- 
cessful private secretary; but I learned 
then, and have learned even more since, 
that to succeed in such a relationship re- 
quires tact and good nature and real 
sympathy with people to start with. 
The tactless and impatient man to whom 
other people's troubles are an annoy- 



Foreword ix 

ance is himself an addition to the bur- 
dens of his chief. But, more than this, 
the private secretary must be content to 
work another man's hours, to hve an- 
other man's conveniences, and even 
when he does not understand, to carry 
out understandingly another man's 
plans and purposes. I think it would 
be impossible to be private secretary to 
a man whom you did not trust, and very 
difficult to be private secretary to a man 
whom you did not admire. 

This, however, views the relationship 
from the personal point of view, but 
when a man is private secretary to a 
public officer new and exacting require- 
ments are introduced. The chief is 
then a public servant, the private sec- 
retary the intermediary between the 
public servant and the public, and he 
must bear all of the burden which can 
be discreetly withdrawn from the chief's 



X Foreword 

shoulders, creating understandings 
where the chief has to be brief, getting 
people's business done for them by 
proper subordinates, and still with sat- 
isfaction, where the chief's time can be 
saved, and, if other chiefs are like me, 
the private secretary must be eyes, ears, 
memory and adviser. 

So, it is a complicated and difficult 
task, and this introduction will perform 
a useful service if it draws the eyes of 
the people who see it for a moment to a 
fairly large class of very important pub- 
lic servants, who toil quietly along, sub- 
merging their personality and conceal- 
ing their gifts until they become unseen 
parts, but very responsible parts, of the 
great mechanism by which public service 
is performed. 

Mr. Hayes became my private secre- 
tary at the age of twenty-three. He 
had not been away from college long, 



Foreword xi 

and he brought freshness of viewpoint 
and enthusiasm for service which char- 
acterizes high-spirited American youth 
when given its chance. It would not 
be fitting for me to write here the praise 
of him which I feel, but his success was 
instant and constant, and as the burdens 
of the War Department increased day 
by day from those of peace to the in- 
tense activities of warfare on a great 
scale his efficiency and adequacy grew 
with them, and when he sought release 
in order that he might enter the active 
military service I consented to his going, 
only because I felt that I had no right 
to deprive so rich a mind and generous a 
nature of an opportunity to engage di- 
rectly in the heroic adventure. 

The trip which Mr. Hayes has de- 
scribed was undertaken in order that 
we who went might see with our own 
eyes the things done by our Army in 



xii Foreword 

France, to see on the ground the things 
remaining to be done, and so make our- 
selves more useful to help at home in 
these various enterprises. The physical 
things we saw, Mr. Hayes has described. 
They represent a triumph of American 
industry, ingenuity and labor trans- 
planted in an incredibly short space of 
time to a foreign soil. From the ports 
of debarkation to the front line trenches, 
the paths are lined with evidences of 
broad imagination, comprehensive plan- 
ning and swift execution. In this great 
task General Pershing and his expert 
staff have had the major portion, but its 
success has fundamentally rested upon 
the coordinated industry and labor at 
home, and together it represents the 
flowering of preparations long in the 
making at home, preparations which in 
the supreme hour of emergency have not 
failed. 



Foreword xiii 

In the trip we discovered that an- 
other building was also being erected on 
this foreign soil — the building of the 
American spirit, caught up from field 
and factory at home, filled with new 
purposes, taught new arts, but every- 
where strong and wholesome. As the 
American industrial spirit had turned 
out great construction work, so the 
American political spirit had turned out 
a great army, and the virility and virtue 
with which free institutions endow peo- 
ples were manifesting themselves in an 
army which sang as it marched along 
the highway, adapted itself to its new 
environment, neighbored the people 
among whom it lived, and engendered in 
its service fresh inspiration about the 
cause for which it fought. 

When this army returns to the United 
States it will tell piecemeal of the hero- 
isms of this great struggle. Books will 



xiv Foreword 

be written, some of them filled with 
statistics and stories of strategy, some 
of them filled with the romance of in- 
dividual or group action, but who will 
preserve to future generations the tonic 
atmosphere of this great picture as a 
whole ? The story will be lifeless which 
tells of railroads built and rivers 
dredged, but deathless the story of the 
children of America who joined their 
industry and their art, their courage and 
their ideals, in common cause with the 
Allied Armies, and to share the sacri- 
fices which have been exacted in the de- 
fense of liberty and the vindication of 
justice. To suggest that there will be 
glory enough to go around is inappro- 
priate, for this glory is indivisible, and 
will be the common possession of the 
Allied peoples who have won it. With 
the British, French and Italians we will 
be tenants in common of a fee simple 



Foreword xv 

estate in Freedom, and the estate will 
have neither metes nor bounds. It will 
pass by descent in common to the chil- 
dren of men, and its blessings in the 
course of years will sanctify the sacri- 
fices made to acquire it. 

This is the picture which Mr. Hayes 
and I went to Europe to see. It is the 
only picture worth seeing now, but it is 
supremely worth seeing. 




Secretary of War. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Secretary of War Baker and Private 
Carlisle Babcock . . . Frontispiece 

PACING 
PAGB 

Group Picture Taken at Hotel Crillon, 
Paris 24 

Inspection of U. S. Salvage Plant . . 25 

Secretary of War Baker — An Inter- 
ested Spectator in the Working of a 
French 155 Gun 48 

Inspecting 155 French Gun ... 49 

Inspection Party on Observation Car . 64 

General Pershing and Secretary of War 
Baker at the Artillery Training 
Range 65 

Secretary of War Baker Taking a Look 
at Enemy Trenches 96 

Colors of 18th Inf. Passing in Review . 97 

Inspection Party on Flying Field . .112 

Watching Some of the Sixty Planes . 113 



Illustrations 



FACING 
PAGB 



General Pershing Talking to Miss Pat 
Moore 144« 

Secretary of War Baker, General 
Pershing and Miss Irene Givenwilson 145 

Secretary of War Baker at the Graves 
of American Soldiers of 165th Inf. . 160 

Secretary of War Baker and General 
Pershing Examining Guns, Projec- 
tiles, etc 161 



SECRETARY BAKER 
AT THE FRONT 



SECRETARY BAKER AT 
THE FRONT 

THERE was business as usual at 
the War Department on the 
twenty-sixth of February in nineteen 
hundred eighteen. True, "business as 
usual," like charity, has been made to 
cover a multitude of sins, and the usual 
business of the War Department is not 
done wholly as popular fancy pictures 
it. But that is the fault of popular 
fancy. 

One remembers how the War Council 
looks in the movies. It comes near the 
end of part two in the five-reel thrillers, 
and its elements are now rather stand- 
ardized: the heavy- jowled generals 
seated around the massive table; the 
chests adorned with many medals; the 



4 Secretary Baker at the Front 

profusion of important-looking docu- 
ments; the pointings to the great map 
upon the wall. One recalls how, after 
some curtain-raising comment from per- 
sons near the foot of the table, all eyes 
and the lens are focused upon him whose 
glittering garments and face of iron 
at the head of the group bear testimony 
to the lavished attentions of the cos- 
tumer and the make-up man. And one 
recollects how, in a dozen scorching sen- 
tences which, assisted by "filler," fairly 
sizzle on the screen, and accompanied 
by much pounding of the table and more 
pointings at the map, he defines by 
metes and bounds the policy of the em- 
pire in the impending crisis, and how as 
he sits down the others arise, and to the 
accompaniment of vigorous noddings 
and spontaneous applause, the meeting 
adjourns because the oracle has spoken 



Secretary Baker at the Front 5 

in the land is clear, or will be made so. 
The plot becomes well thickened in reel 
three, one remembers, until the citizenry 
of the invaded land springs to arms, ex- 
pels the opposing horde, and (the 
maiden and the man having been re- 
united and the country having resolved 
never again to be caught unawares) , the 
five-piece orchestra vigorously attacks 
the national anthem as a finale. 

We picture the secretary of war as 
sitting in a council-room weighing the 
merits of volunteering as against con- 
scription, the constitution of overseas 
contingents, the advisability of inter- 
vention in the East, and such like things. 
This is so; but there is more. There 
is always the unending line of the more 
or less faithful. There are landlords 
willing to sell to the Government lands 
described as corner lots in the Elysian 
Fields, with all improvements in and 



6 Secretary Baker at the Front 

paid for. There are the cranks who 
come with whispered intimations of 
what their scheme will do if they are 
encouraged to the extent of being given 
a job and an appropriation to develop 
it. There are the volunteer advisers, 
armed to the teeth with briefs and brist- 
ling with knowledge as to just how it 
should be done ; and the meanings of "it" 
are legion. There are the professional 
job-seekers — no longer suppliants for 
work or even for a position. That is a 
method crude, and ancient. Nowadays 
this species produces a pound and a half 
of home-grown, commendatory letters, 
tells with naive modesty the financial 
sacrifices his act involves; mayhap de- 
scribes his valiant services in political 
trenches, throws about it all a veil of pa- 
triotism — with the emphasis on the 
"pay" — and indicates that he might be 
induced to heed a call for his services in 



Secretary Baker at the Front 7 

such a place as would befit his dignity, 
utilize his organizing genius and capital- 
ize his administrative cunning. 

There are the eccentric Inventive 
visitors with a device about which the 
world revolves ; a contrivance so terrible 
that of necessity it will end the institu- 
tion of war, and emancipate the race. 
Often this type is on the point of yield- 
ing to the entreaties of a foreign Gov- 
ernment. But he comes to give his 
own country one more chance and he 
knows that none other than the secre- 
tary of war can pass upon the mechan- 
ical construction, and technical practica- 
bility of his proposed invention. 

There are the professionally Efficient 
folk — they who know how the whole 
land and all that dwell therein can be 
roused to a realization of the issues; 
who know the secret of conducting the 
nation's business in such Utopian and 



8 Secretary Baker at the Front 

expeditious fashion that everyone who 
approaches the public trough may be 
contented and some may even be satis- 
fied. Bulging brief cases prove their 
claims ; everything is carefully typewrit- 
ten with wide margins, much underlin- 
ing, and extravagant use of the red half 
of the ribbon. Their talk begins with 
a reluctant reference to red tape and 
they come to a strong conclusion with 
a dissertation on cutting the Gordian 
knot. These are the people who deal 
daily, in terms of the market, with Re- 
juvenation and Reorganization; they 
are the guardians of the saw-dust twins 
who would do your work ; and they must 
talk about it in hopelessly general and 
generally hopeless terms. 

There are the Invitational callers, 
coming from Their Town to convey an 
opportunity to speak in the Odd Fel- 
lows' Hall at a meeting arranged by the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 9 

Board of Trade when the ears of the 
world will be cocked to hear the clarion 
notes that will issue. 

No chronicle could claim complete- 
ness did it fail to mention the Respect- 
paying visitors, that ancient if not al- 
ways honorable species who come bent 
upon the laying on of hands and the 
shaking thereof, and whose sensibili- 
ties would be injured were they to be 
told that the paying of respects in war- 
time might well be a pastime of the 
idle rich or at least of the idle. 

So grinds the grist ; so comes the vast 
kinship of the Willing: but let it not 
be forgotten or overlooked that these 
fantastic folk hereinbefore mentioned 
are made bizarre by very reason of 
the fact that they are in the minor- 
ity. Outnumbering and overmaster- 
ing them is that greater company of 
those who represent the glory of democ- 



10 Secretary Baker at the Front 

racy, in constituting a people active in 
the conduct of the common concerns, 
and unintimidated in their efforts to 
carry on the nation's enterprise. Cer- 
tainly the foibles of these grotesque but 
unrepresentative elements must not be 
permitted to lessen the repute or reflect 
upon the spirit of a people who in al- 
most unbroken rank have pledged their 
support and given their treasure and 
offered their blood for a cause which can 
be made to be worth all it takes. For 
these latter are the folk and theirs the 
deeds that leaven the whole; theirs are 
the actions that transcend the idiosyn- 
crasies of the rest, that constitute the 
temper of the times, that give character 
to these days when a world is being won 
to democratic ways — days whose story 
in the great history will be set apart and 
written red. 

In time of emergency it is the De- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 11 

partment of War which principally 
canalizes the exertions of a nation as 
expressed in military effort. And 
within that department the starting 
place of stimuli, the center of the nerv- 
ous system, the goal of the venous sys- 
tem, the starting-point of the arterial 
system, is the ofSce of the secretary of 
war. And there on the morning of 
the twenty-sixth of February there was 
business as usual. 

Not so on the afternoon of the 
twenty-sixth. Then it was that an 
automobile exactly similar to a third of 
a million others made somewhere in 
Michigan last year left the War De- 
partment, quietly picked up a number 
of pieces of baggage at three or four 
Washington residences, and deposited 
them at the Union Station. That same 
afternoon four persons appeared at the 
War Department with suspiciously 



12 Secretary Baker at the Front 

fresh hair-cuts. That night four per- 
sons strolled into the depot and entered 
the midnight train. One of them — ^the 
chief of the party — boarded it a few 
minutes before the great iron gates were 
opened to other passengers; but there 
was no fooling the kinky-headed man 
with the red cap. "Good evenin', Mis- 
tah Secretary," he said in tones that 
seemed to roll along the great corridors 
of the station and to reverberate in the 
balconies of it. Next to arrive was 
Major General Black, the Chief of 
Engineers. Following him was Lieu- 
tenant Colonel M. L. Brett, accom- 
panying the secretary of war as aide. 
These, with Mr. Baker's private secre- 
tary, comprised the quartet that slipped 
away under cover of darkness. 

Cabinet officials of these United 
States have been rather exclusive folk. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 13 

Until this year of our Lord, no cabinet 
official had crossed the Atlantic ocean 
during his incumbency. That fact may 
argue for their busyness or their pro- 
vinciaHsm or their domesticity. What- 
ever the reason, it was the home fires 
they tended. 

But came the Great War. With it 
came the transportation of American 
soldiers to a far part of the world, across 
three thousand miles of ocean and six 
hundred miles of France. The novelty 
of the undertaking, the intervening 
space between here and Over There, 
the time required even for the most 
speedy means of communication, com- 
plicated the enterprise. And many 
things are happening in France; some 
of them are new things under the sun, 
and not a few of them happen with most 
uncommon swiftness. The situation is 



14 Secretary Baker at the Front 

not simplified by the fact that the War 
portfolio in this country is usually held, 
and wisely so, by a civilian. 

Every traveler ^ returning from 
France and other localities of battle 
seems to know the ^nswers to the rid- 
dles that confound ^us here at home. 
Whether it is of the morale of the 
French, the propaganda of the Boche^ 
the fuel supply of Italy, the food situa- 
tion in England, the stability of the Bol- 
sheviki, on all of these the home- 
coming globe-trotter speaks with a 
discomforting amount of assurance 
which is difficult to combat here at a 
range of three thousand miles from 
first hand information. A Middle 
West sage opines that an expert is a 
man one hundred and fifty miles from 
home; and by the same token a person 
who speaks with an easy familiarity of 
things he has seen, some thousands of 



Secretary Baker at the Front 15 

miles beyond the pale for most of us, 
has an unfair oratorical advantage. 
Having had the disease, I recognize the 
symptoms. 

Men of the War Department, return- 
ing from foreign assignments, pressed 
upon the secretary of war the urgency 
of his visiting the battle-grounds of the 
Western Front. Men of the Ameri- 
can Expeditionary Forces were anx- 
ious for the understanding that would 
come from personal contact and actual 
observation. Those persons here who, 
for sundry reasons, are not admirers of 
the War Secretary were not unwilling 
that he should go. On all sides the 
ayes had it. In the end he went. 

Secrecy as to the time of going was 
essential. England was yet mourning 
the passing of Earl Kitchener. Twice 
the plans of departure had to be re- 
made because of those leaks which have 



16 Secretary Baker at the Front 

their source nowhere and which per- 
colate everywhere. When finally the 
start was made, this brief statement was 
made to the fraternity of Washington 
newspaper men, who would immediately 
know of the secretary's mission from his 
absence at their afternoon conference: 

The secretary of war leaves Washington to- 
day for an indefinite absence. For his personal 
safety and the protection of military information 
it is urgently requested that no intimation or 
news of his movements be made public until such 
time as an official statement can be issued. This 
will be done at the earliest possible moment and 
thereafter only the ordinary requests for secrecy 
with respect to military information of value to 
the enemy will apply. When the immediate con- 
siderations of safety and military secrecy no 
longer have force the Government will, of course, 
make no request designed to limit news of or 
comment on the Secretary's movements. 

On the morning following their mid- 
night exit, the train bearing the four 
travelers from Washington stopped at 
a small station on the outskirts of a cer- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 17 

tain Atlantic port (New York, by 
name), where the four passengers 
alighted. Disaster almost overtook the 
expedition at the outset, because for the 
first time since the memory of man run- 
neth not to the contrary, the train 
reached that station well ahead of its 
scheduled time, and there was not a 
semblance of other business in hand at 
that dull morning hour except the dis- 
charge of those four passengers. That 
may be why the secret-service repre- 
sentatives had diiBculty in recognizing 
the persons whom they were to meet, 
and who bore every evidence of late and 
hurried arisings and of hastily made 
toilets. 

A revenue cutter was lying near by, 
and it bore the party six miles out into 
the harbor, where a great, gray cruiser 
lay at anchor. Here again a tinge of 
sorrow touched the proceedings, for 



18 Secretary Baker at the Front 

upon the arrival of the secretary of 
war the ship was "sealed," that is, no 
members of the crew were permitted to 
leave the vessel. None of those who 
had previously gone ashore knew any- 
thing of the prospective presence of a 
distinguished visitor. The sadness lies 
in the fact that a substantial part of the 
ship's shopping had not been finished, 
and the sealed ship prevented its com- 
pletion; but none the less there was 
never a time on the eastward journey 
when food was not plentiful, albeit at 
times it was far from appetizing, due to 
certain vagaries of the passengers and 
certain whims of the sea. 

It was a far cry from those February 
fuel-less days of landlubbers to the coal 
piles of the navy. On every square foot 
that would hold a lump or bag of coal, 
a lump or bag of coal was placed. One 
climbed over great black piles in going 



Secretary Baker at the Front 19 

to his food or his bed or his air. It is 
a working habit of the navy to take on 
sufficient fuel in America to last for 
two crossings, thus avoiding the taking 
on of coal in Europe. 

It was yet relatively early in the 
morning when our cruiser was boarded, 
and its bow was not scheduled to swing 
seaward until late in the day; so that 
stretch of intervening hours, while we 
were held incommunicado by the sealed 
ship, seemed at the start a barren ex- 
panse of hours stretching before us. 
But their flight was more winged than 
our anticipations promised. There is 
enough and more of the unknown about 
a great floating engine of war to satisfy 
the amateur's primal sense of curiosity 
for a considerable period. 

First, there were our new quarters, 
in which to settle ourselves, and thaf 
can be made a time-consuming proc- 



20 Secretary Baker at the Front 

ess. The vessel chanced to be the flag- 
ship of an admiral, and the admiral 
chanced to be absent, which gave us 
more commodious quarters in which to 
settle ourselves. Our abodes were all 
in the stern, and one little living-room 
we shared in common. Secretary 
Baker had what were the admiral's 
sleeping-quarters; beside his bed were 
as many telephonic and bell-ringing and 
light-flashing signals as would be found 
in a combination switchboard and en- 
gine-house. Opposite the secretary's, 
and flanking the living-room on the 
other side, was the cabin occupied by 
Colonel Brett and me. The captain 
had vacated his quarters farther for- 
ward for a post close by the bridge ; his 
cabin, therefore, was occupied by Gen- 
eral Black. 

Now I have driven and directed in 



Secretary Baker at the Front 21 
some of my days an automotive machine 
of the same nature and nomenclature 
as that which had gathered in our bag- 
gage in Washington. Puns have issued 
about that machine; I would not add to 
them. But one may say with respect 
and sobriety that such a driving ac- 
quaintance begets a f acihty and an ex- 
pertness in detecting and locating every 
conceivable variation of creak and rat- 
tle that the friction of material sub- 
stances can produce. Perhaps it was 
so. I may have been passing fair in 
such pursuits among the landsmen. 
But there I was a novice; literally and 
figuratively I was at sea. During what 
have been called facetiously "the silent 
watches of the night" more squeaks, 
groans, and rattles, more scrapings, 
grindings, and raspings could be de- 
veloped in the bowels of that ship — 



22 Secretary Baker at the Front 

and were — than in any similar acreage 
in which I have tried to sleep the slum- 
ber of the relatively just. 

In command of our ship was Captam 
De Witt Blamer. Captain Blamer is 
one of the few naval officers who look 
as they are made to look on the stage 
and in the books. He is big of frame, 
gruff of manner, tender of heart. He 
is not overgiven to speech, and his talk 
is rarely opinions or prophecy, but 
rather conclusions. I should n't like to 
be tried before him for breaking into an 
apple orchard or for failing to swab the 
quarter-deck ; and, perhaps for the same 
reason, I should be wholly content, in 
searching for safe passage, to sail the 
seas upon his ship. 

When a man builds a cruiser, he 
thinks last about the comfort of the 
craft. And whatever luxuries inad- 
vertently creep in, become taboo "dur- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 23 

ing the period of the emergency." 
Never, for example, were hghts more 
thoroughly hidden under a bushel than 
are those of the navy. In ways that 
are dark these men of the sea excel. 
A few improvised lighting fixtures at- 
tached to the "battle circuit" furnished 
the only illumination available for the 
secretarial party after the ordinary sup- 
ply was cut off, which happened every 
day just when it became dark enough to 
need it. 

Neither was ventilation as free as 
air. Late every afternoon a person 
equipped with a kit of tools, some sheets 
of tin and of rubber, and a kill- joy dis- 
position carefully sealed up all the port- 
holes through which stray gleams might 
escape or enter. 

Cruiser-life soon settles into a rou- 
tine that is neither rich in variation nor 
much affected by any circumstances ex- 



24 Secretary Baker at the Front 

cept the elements. Sleeping and read- 
ing and eating and walking the decks 
follow one another in more or less regu- 
lar order. To every one going toward 
France the problem of acquiring suffi- 
cient knowledge of French to procure 
food and shelter in an emergency be- 
comes pertinent. The question was 
solved on the ship of the secretary of 
war by the organization of a language 
class that convened every afternoon. 
Second in command on the ship was 
Commander Richard D. White, former 
naval attache at Rome, traveler, scholar, 
follower of the sea, and man of the 
world. White knows enough French 
even to talk to a Paris taxicab-driver, 
and that 's the acid test. Every after- 
noon at four he would gather his dis- 
ciples about him in the wardroom, and 
the instruction would proceed in the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 25 

Socratic fashion. At five, when those 
present had absorbed their fill of tenses, 
ehsions, idioms, and genders, a sailor 
who should have been in the hfe-saving 
detachment would appear bearing 
marmalade, toast, and tea with which 
to revive all hands. 

Meals were served in the captams 
dining-room, which, like his cabin, had 
been deserted when the bridge and the 
pilot-house and their immediate envi- 
rons became the working-place and eat- 
ing-place and sleeping-place of the 
ship's commander. On two days the 
seas were so heavy as to make it impossi- 
ble to keep dishes or food sufficiently 
stationary for use in the captain's rooms, 
and our mess was therefore combined 
with the mess of the junior officers in 
the ward-room. Two officers from the 
ward-room mess joined the secretary's 



26 Secretary Baker at the Front 

party at lunch and at dinner every day, 
and on one day the secretary was the 
guest of the junior officers. 

After beginning the journey in splen- 
did weather, Neptune speedily began, 
in mid-ocean, to show signs of enemy 
affihation. On the second morning at 
sea a stray breaker at dawn swept a 
sailor overboard, but the luckless per- 
son seemed thoroughly to enjoy swim- 
ming the Atlantic waves until, twenty- 
five minutes after his misadventure, he 
was brought back to the ship, and his 
request for a cigarette was complied 
with. 

Unhappily, there was more than this 
one taken by the sea, and for the others 
there was no returning. Theirs was 
the last full measure of devotion. Two 
fine young lads went to the eternal 
camp-grounds, succumbing to the ex- 
posure caused by long hours of outside 



Secretary Baker at the Front 27 

work in raw weather and on a rough 
sea. 

There is a dignity to a burial at sea 
that no other ceremony possesses. The 
decks are hned bv all of the crew not 

ft/ 

actually engaged in the navigation of 
the vessel. The ship's band is present, 
and the chaplain reads the impressive 
burial service to the accompaniment of 
the crashing of seemingly boundless 
waves. Then, as a guard of honor fires 
a final salute, the body, borne by hands 
that in its life had been those of com- 
rades, and draped in the flag it had 
served to the last, is consigned to the 
deep. There is no din of battle; there 
are no hostile cries. But these have 
died in line of battle no less than their 
brothers in Picardy and Flanders and 
Lorraine. 

There is a sort of frankness and cas- 
ualness in speaking of affairs of life and 



28 Secretary Baker at the Front 

death aboard a war-ship in war-time 
that is disconcerting at the outset. The 
indirectness and the hesitations, the 
reticences and the conventions that so- 
ciety usually throws around discussions 
of vital danger and bodily peril, are 
swept away. Constantly one sees and 
hears in the daylight hours the construc- 
tion of life-rafts ; every one without ex- 
ception in the latter part of the journey 
wears at all times and places his life- 
belt; one hears discussed in conversa- 
tional tones the possibility of the life- 
boats withstanding the fury of the sea, 
the methods of protecting their human 
cargo against exposure, the sufficiency 
of food and water aboard them. When 
one lives and moves and has his being 
in the presence of potential death, he 
loses his awe of it and disregards the 
niceties of speech that ordinarily char- 
acterize such references. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 29 

Every precaution was taken for the 
personal safety of the secretary of 
war. Having been assigned to a life- 
boat, and having had allotted to it a 
crew to see that he would promptly 
board it and that it would be properly 
manned, he became accustomed to the 
emergency arrangements by repeated 
"abandon-ship" drills. General Sher- 
man never realized the full force of a 
certain definition which he is sometimes 
said to have formulated; he never went 
through * 'abandon ship" drills. He 
did n't have to lie awake half his nights 
mentally picturing a procession of 
U-boats playing like porpoises in the 
vicinity, or to fall into a troubled sleep 
the other half, dreaming of submarines 
pushing their snouts through his 
hatches, or leaving him in that state of 
suspended animation which one awaits 
the explosion of a torpedo just beneath 



30 Secretary Baker at the Front 

him. And in ten seconds flat after 
falling into that pseudo sleep, he was n't 
awakened and roused and frightened by 
a boisterous clanging that caused him 
to catapult into a life-preserver and to 
dash from cover. He never had then 
to wait for weeks, it seems, beside his 
little life boat before the exercises are 
concluded. The bleakest experience on 
the seven seas, next to walking a plank, 
is to stand upon the deck of a ship at 
the gray hour of five, with Morpheus 
and Aurora still doing battle for the 
possession of your senses, with no odors 
of breakfast distinguishable, with that 
unkempt feeling that comes from sleep- 
ing in your clothes, with water, water 
everywhere, but not a drop to wash in, 
and with the immediate foreground oc- 
cupied by all that 's to stand between 
you and safety, a small, frail rowboat, 
overloaded with oars, and having hidden 



Secretary Baker at the Front 31 

in one corner of it a small tin of water 
and a modest helping of free lunch. In 
those watery dawns I learned to sing 
with a new gusto, "I love thy rocks and 
rills, Thy woods and templed hills." 
One can stand a rill ; that 's manage- 
able : but there are times when the ocean 
seems overdone. 

In addition to the regulation life-pre- 
servers, buoyant rubber "overall" out- 
fits were provided for the secretarial 
party. As a matter of fact, there would 
have been scant use for this material 
even in case of disaster. There is a 
thoroughgoing tradition among the offi- 
cers of the navy that no means of pro- 
tection will be utilized by them that are 
not available to their men. It is such 
considerations that strengthen morale. 
I could work a bit harder for an officer 
and endure some injustice at his hands 
if I knew that he had taken thought of 



32 Secretary Baker at the Front 

the time when he and I might be in vital 
danger, and that he had consciously re- 
solved not to avail himself of the advan- 
tages over me that his rank and station 
would permit him to claim. The annals 
of the army abound in incidents testify- 
ing to the sacrifices of troops for offi- 
cers who had shared their perils in com- 
mon in the past. 

But, usable or not, these contrivances 
are interesting things to contemplate 
when the weather is fair and the sea is 
calm. There is a whistle to occupy one, 
and many pockets to explore, and sim- 
ple mechanical devices to practise util- 
izing. But I yet have a haunting fear 
that some evil-minded political person 
may find those suits which were left 
aboard, and discover the flask of brandy 
that 's in a pocket — or was — ^in Secre- 
tary Baker's paraphernalia. 

In the middle of the trip east a part 



Secretary Baker at the Front 33 

of an afternoon was spent in examining 
the anti-submarine defenses of our ship 
— the lookout system, the depth charges, 
the smoke screens, and the rest. While 
making the rounds we stopped to hear 
a talk on fire control given by the 
ship's gunnery officer, Lieutenant Com- 
mander Gill, describing the coordination 
of the guns, the finding of ranges, the 
communications between the different 
stations, and many other unfathomable 
things. That is a heartening sort of 
procedure. It strengthens one's inner 
morale. Unhappily, our inspection 
ended at the chart-room, where marked 
in red were the locations from which 
submarine warnings had come. That 
was decidedly less heartening and cor- 
respondingly detrimental to one's esprit. 
Fighting against the submarine men- 
ace is a wearing sort of warfare. The 
object of the search is seldom seen, if in- 



34 Secretary Baker at the Front 

deed it is seen at all. If that Governor 
of a sovereign State who remarked to a 
fellow Governor on the duration of time 
between drinks were now aboard a de- 
stroyer and were considering the length 
of time between subs, he would magnify, 
and mayhap multiply his remarks. 
After watching the sea for days, search- 
ing for a spot on the waves, a landlub- 
ber is in fit physical condition and prime 
mental state to see dozens of imaginary 
spots or to miss a real one. 

To keep the gun crews and the guns 
in fighting trim, a period of target prac- 
tice was held at sea. Our ship would 
drag a target after it in the water, while 
a second ship blazed at it. To one un- 
versed in such things the tow-line be- 
tween the ship and the target it pulled 
seemed uncomfortably short ; the former 
seemed to constitute a much more likely 
mark than the spot which followed it. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 35 

But all the shots hit the latter. Upon 
the quarter-deck of our own vessel a 
sort of parlor range was erected, and 
pistol practice was had. The experi- 
ment proceeded admirably until there 
came the turn of the secretary of war 
to shoot. His first shot hit and bisected 
the cord upon which the bull's-eyes were 
suspended, and the targets settled 
gently into the sea. There is no point 
in trying to encourage marksmanship 
when some one insists on shooting away 
the range. 

Once on the eastward journey the 
crew of the cruiser and its guests had all 
the sensations that accompany a brush 
with the wily U-boats. In the late 
afternoon of the day before the escort 
of destroyers from the French coast was 
met, the ship's submarine defenses went 
vigorously and boisterously into action. 
The secretary of war rushed from the 



36 Secretary Baker at the Front 

captain's cabin, where he had been ab- 
sorbing French, to the quarter-deck, 
where he was nearly embraced by a 
young colored seaman who in the ec- 
stasy of excitement kept shouting, 
"There she is! There she is!" pointing 
to a small object five hundred feet away 
in the water. It was dark in color, 
about the size of a piece of gas-pipe, and 
protruded eight or ten inches above the 
surface, a slender target, but a peri- 
scope 's a periscope. Even as our gaze 
followed the outstretched finger of the 
young sailor a well-aimed shot made a 
direct hit. The object disappeared, 
and then bobbed up again. There were 
some distinctly disappointed fighting 
men aboard when it became apparent 
that the fight was with a fioating spar; 
but for the most of us the reconcihation 
was easy. In fact those who would like 
to fight another day made no pretense 



Secretary Baker at the Front 37 

of concealment in heaving a genuine 
sigh of rehef when the dawn of morning 
showed a sizable family of destroyers 
plying busily about us. 

There are some things which no per- 
son can be expected to write into a nar- 
rative. No general wishes to recount 
his own reverses, as most communiques 
bear witness. No individual cares to 
pen the story of his demise, as many 
obituaries prove. No rejected suitor 
cares to spread the tale of his discom- 
fiture, as every autobiography indicates. 
So, there is to me no overwhelming 
sense of joy in recalling all the details 
of the trans-atlantic trip. I raise a 
question of personal privilege in asking 
to be excused from elaborating upon 
such entries as these which stalk through 
my diary: 

March S. The secretary and General Black 
agree that the sea is more powerful and terrible 



88 Secretary Baker at the Front 

than winsome and companionable. I, too_, agree, 
and I have reasons for feeling more deeply on 
the subject than either of them. 

March 4. We are told the ship dipped 37° 
in the storm to-day. I think they must have 
read the figures backward — it could not have 
been less than 73°. At times we seemed to be 
a very fair imitation of a U-boat. Between 
lurches Surgeon Sparkman gave me a second 
anti-typhoid shot in the arm. 

March 5. The furniture has been lashed 
down and the carpets have been taken up. Last 
night all the hatches were closed, and we had 
as much ventilation as a vacuum. My left arm, 
charged with anti-typhoid vaccine, is a bad lia- 
bility to carry around in these turbulent times. 
I think I should prefer a little typhoid to this 
antidote. 

March 6. I wish they were less noisy in 
building those life-rafts on the quarter-deck. 
It reminds me too much of some story in which 
the prisoner sat in his cell and heard the ham- 
mering outside where workmen were construct- 
ing his gallows. 

March 9. Life-preservers now worn at all 
times. 

March 10, 8 A. M. Life-preservers are not 
made for comfort. Neither is anti-typhoid vac- 
cine, and my third shot in the arm was regis- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 39 

tered last night. There is precious little sleep- 
ing going on to-night. As we sat at the table 
after dinner, we tried to think of gay and jovial 
things to talk about, but the words rattled as 
they came out. I essayed to spin the merry tale 
of Doc Merz who tried to buy a German dic- 
tionary for the Military Intelligence Branch of 
the army, and who was chased out of the book- 
store by a super-patriotic clerk, — patrioteer. 
Doc called him, — but I found myself veering to 
the more funereal yarn of Red MacKinnon, who^ 
years ago, when a sophomore, bought himself a 
pair of white gloves and circularized the under- 
takers of Cleveland as a professional pall-bearer. 
I recalled vividly the time in the corridors of 
the War Department when in passing. Dean 
Keppel and I struck mock fistic attitudes toward 
each other, and an excited stranger shouted 
loudly to the effect that I was assaulting with 
intent to kill or maim the confidential clerk of 
the secretary of war. 

I 'm sorry nobody mentioned the story of 
Huck Finn at his own funeral ; that 's sepul- 
chral enough to fit the occasion, and yet it has a 
chuckle at the end. Toward midnight we 
desisted from telling ghost-stories, and the en- 
tire party descended to playing solitaire. The 
secretary of war has held something from us. 
None of us ever had seen him playing cards, but 



40 Secretary Baker at the Front 

he knew several brands of solitaire that were 
strangers to the rest of us. 

There must be a defect in the mechanism of 
the sun; it has been a day and a half since sun- 
setj and daylight should have come along since. 

It was the clear, bright Sunday morn- 
ing of March 10 that we caught sight 
of the shores of France and proceeded 
toward our port of entry. There were 
unusual signs of activity, which, we 
afterward discovered, were occasioned 
by late reports of submarines in the 
neighborhood. But the channel was 
well swept, the lanes were thoroughly 
patrolled, the air sentries were keenly 
vigilant, and the enemy discreetly kept 
a safe distance. 

For eleven days we had been on the 
ocean. At times the vessels of the con- 
voy had been so close as to make it al- 
most possible to shout through a mega- 
phone from one to the other. But it 
was not until the shores of France were 



Secretary Baker at the Front 41 

in sight and the Secretary of War sent 
a message of congratulation to the 
senior officer of the convoy, who was 
aboard another ship, — it was not until 
then that the presence of a cabinet mem- 
ber in the convoy was known. There 
had been wonderment on the other ships 
when, meeting the destroyers at sea, the 
cruiser had failed to turn westward, but 
had continued toward the French coast. 
It may be said now that our ship had 
left New York a day ahead of the other 
ships in the convoy, and had sailed a 
false course during the first part of its 
journey, joining the rest of the convoy 
at a rendezvous at sea. 

At anchor in the harbor, there were 
a number of ceremonies to perform. 
From the amount of wigwagging which 
was done, the captains seemed to be 
writing biographies of each other. The 
French naval commandant and the 



42 Secretary Baker at the Front 

American Army and Navy command- 
ing officers. Admiral Wilson and Gen- 
eral McClure, were to be received. The 
senior officer of the convoy, upon an- 
other ship, was visited. The com- 
manders of the escorting destroyers 
came to pay their respects. There 
were leave-takings upon the cruiser. 
Then ashore — ashore in France! 

A band was playing in the city 
square, but there was not the buoyancy 
and gaiety to its notes that was there 
in other days. A merry-go-round of- 
fered a feeble opportunity for amuse- 
ment, but its little patrons were not 
the care-free, shouting children that are 
found at country fairs everywhere in 
America. The populace, indeed, was 
on promenade, but those blue-coated, 
and often empty-sleeved, men and those 
somber-dressed women were not the 
promenaders of antebellum time. This 



Secretary Baker at the Front 43 

was France at war, great-hearted as of 
old, and perhaps even more lovable, 
albeit scarred in body and soul and reel- 
ing a bit, but reeling forward to the hon- 
orable conclusion of a war she never 
willed. 

Darkness was just falling on the 
French coast when the secretary of 
war and his party stepped aboard the 
private car which in 1914 had carried 
out of France the German Ambassador, 
and which now was carrying the civilian 
chief of the American Army through 
the places where "the Yanks are com- 
ing" — but that 's another story. 



II 

THE cold gray dawn of morning 
reaches its maximum coolness and 
grayness about daybreak in a Parisian 
railroad station. Depots are not par- 
ticularly homelike or cozy places, and 
dawn is a rather doleful time; but in 
Paris the effect is accentuated. The 
mental pictures of years image the folk 
of the French Capital as retiring but a 
little while before sun-up ; hence the soli- 
tude of that hour; and the changes in 
the war-time Paris heighten rather than 
diminish the illusion. But the cheer- 
lessness of such a place was lessened at 
the nocturnal hour of six on the morn- 
ing of March 11 by a group of Ameri- 
can officers and civilians, met to greet 

44 



Secretary Baker at the Front 45 

the secretary of war. Pershing was 
there, tall, straight, and dynamic. So, 
too, was Bliss, kindly, keen, and 
thoughtful. There were representa- 
tives of the State Department, also, and 
officials of the French Government. 

Informal greetings completed, the 
cavalcade moved to the Hotel Crillon, 
beside the Place de la Concorde. At 
his quarters there, the Secretary of War 
found assigned to him as orderly a 
short and wiry sergeant whose name 
was Patrick Walsh, and who looked the 
part. The secretary inquired of Gen- 
eral Pershing concerning Pat, and 
learned the story that has often since 
been printed. Walsh was in his dugout 
when a hostile raid occurred and an offi- 
cer, backed by three privates, appeared 
at the entrance and yelled, "Come out, 
Americans." 

" Yep, I'm coming," replied Pat; but 



46 Secretary Baker at the Front 

as he came through the doorway one of 
the Boche threw at him a hand grenade 
which struck him in the head. The 
grenade failed to explode, but neverthe- 
less it vexed Walsh ; so much so, that he 
killed the officer and one private and as- 
sisted in the capture of the other two. 
As a reward, Pat was sent to Paris to 
serve for a time as orderly to the sec- 
retary of war. But there was a wist- 
ful gleam in Pat's eyes the while, and an 
amateur could see that his heart was still 
in the trenches. If I should ever be in 
No Man's Land, I hope Pat Walsh 
won't be too far away. 

Fresh water upon shipboard had been 
a limited commodity, and salt-water 
bathing has its limitations ; the train en 
route from the coast had not been able 
to supply the deficiency. It came to 
pass, therefore, that the initial ceremo- 
nies of the party at the Crillon consisted 



Secretary Baker at the Front 47 

in a series of business-like baths. More 
cheerfully we assembled for breakfast, 
our first Parisian meal. Butter was 
not to be had, but that entails no suffer- 
ing to those who prefer preserves. 
There was no sugar, but saccharine is 
an acceptable substitute. Cream was 
off the menu, but there was enough of 
milk. War bread is coarse, and rather 
unyielding to the teeth, but many of us 
are finding that it is not less palatable 
than the wheat product of piping times. 
Later meals were to impress further 
upon us what French cooks, aided by a 
few dishes, a little batter, and a prayer, 
can achieve. It is well for those of us 
still young enough to yearn for sweets 
that the forte of the French chef is the 
making of desserts. It is that end of 
the menu that now provides the greatest 
opportunity for the exercise of the in- 
genuity of the food camoufleur. 



48 Secretary Baker at the Front 

It was agreed while breakfast was be- 
ing eaten that the secretary would re- 
main in Paris only long enough to pay 
his respects to the officials of the repub- 
lic; that he should then proceed to the 
coast for a study of the Base Section; 
then inland along the line of communi- 
cations to observe the works of the In- 
termediate Section; then to the Ad- 
vanced Section, and finally to the other 
sectors on the front. He would then 
visit the bases of war. 

For France, no less than ancient 
Gaul, is of three parts. The Base Sec- 
tion includes the areas surrounding the 
ports of debarkation, with their great 
docks and machinery for unloading, 
their stevedores' camps, and their facili- 
ties for incoming troops awaiting trans- 
portation toward the front. 

The Intermediate Section is the place 
of wide-spread storage facilities, the 




tf 3 




O 
o 



Secretary Baker at the Front 49 

place where the Americans' principal 
lines of communication converge, the 
place of base hospitals, of laboratory 
and outdoor experiments, of semi-ad- 
vanced training. 

The Advanced Section may best be 
described as the goal of soldiers. One 
knows when he reaches it by the senti- 
nels he passes ; by the bodies of troops he 
sees humming as they march to the 
front or, singing still, come from it; by 
the long lines of artillery crawling along 
winding roads or lying incongruously 
in once peaceful hamlets ; by the tangles 
of barbed wire in the fields along the 
highway; by the stark ruins of what 
were homes; by ragged holes in the 
ground where shells have found a futile 
mark ; and by that distant rumble which 
seems, as one listens to it daily, to have 
had no beginning and to promise no 
end. 



50 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Immediately upon leaving the Cril- 
lon breakfast-table, there was begun a 
two-days' series of conferences with offi- 
cials, American and French, at Paris 
and Versailles. 

The first morning's work was at the 
chambers of the premier, where "The 
Tiger of France" and the secretary 
conferred in private. An hour later, 
the American Ambassador and Mr. 
Baker closeted themselves at the em- 
bassy. Next we drove to the residence 
of the Marshal of France. At an old 
military school Marshal Joffre, who 
now is military adviser to the French 
Government, leads a semi-retired life 
among the students of the art to which 
he has devoted his life. He is enthu- 
siastically reminiscent of his visit to 
America, and speaks hopefully of re- 
peating the trip. After a hurried re- 
turn to the Crillon, we lunched with 



Secretary Baker at the Front 51 

General Pershing. At two-thirty, the 
secretary of war had his first meeting 
with the newspaper men. Most of 
them spoke English and the procedure 
was not greatly dissimilar to that of the 
afternoon meetings at Washington. 
Scarcely had the journalists gone when 
the secretary was on his way to the AUied 
War Council at Versailles. In what 
was the beautiful Trianon Palace Hotel 
are the Council headquarters, within a 
stone's throw of the spot where the Third 
Estate precipitated the Revolution of 
1789, where England recognized the in- 
dependence of America in 1783, and 
where the first Prussian WiUiam made 
his headquarters in 1870. After the 
fashion of French structures, a richly 
furnished salon runs the length of the 
building. The council room, immedi- 
ately within the main entrance on the 
first floor, is separated from the salon 



52 Secretary Baker at the Front 

only by transparent glass. There, in 
JSTovember of 1917, with the assembling 
of the Interallied Council, began the 
centralizing process which culminated 
in March of this year with the appoint- 
ment of a Supreme Commander. Fol- 
lowing a hasty trip back to Paris there 
was a late afternoon conference with 
the President of the French Republic. 
Thereafter the rise of a brightly shin- 
ing moon and the appearance of count- 
less stars seemed to usher in the end of 
a perfect day. 

But there was not yet to be rest for 
the tired travelers; for when in mid- 
evening the alerte sounded as a warning 
signal of an approaching air attack, all 
Paris knew that the Boche were coming 
by the highroad, and in that knowledge 
discreetly sought its securest cellar. 

In an air raid, especially a first air 
raid, one's feeling of fear is not accen- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 53 
tuated. There is too much of novelty 
about the proceeding: the pitch-dark 
streets; the clatter of anti-aircraft guns; 
the occasional explosions of falling 
bombs; the subterranean shelters; the 
love affairs, incipient and otherwise, be- 
gun or developed among the groups 
gathered by chance wherever protec- 
tion offers ; the arrival of those who have 
wandered long and collided much in 
inky blackness; the lady who worries 
orally about her husband, who, it would 
appear, is lost in the city, speaks no 
French and constitutes a sort of phos- 
phorescent target for attack; the bored 
individuals to whom each raid is merely 
another, and who impress their experi- 
ence by discoursing upon the probable 
mark and possible effect of each bomb 
whose fall is heard; the reported oc- 
currence of fatalities; the nonsensical 
rumors of huge and fantastic victories 



54 Secretary Baker at the Front 

and defeats — all are part of the air of- 
fense and defense. 

The entertaining of official visitors 
had long since lost its novelty for our 
maitre dfhotel at the Crillon, but none 
the less he felt grave responsibility for 
the security of the newly arrived Ameri- 
cans. With a lantern of ancient con- 
struction and diminutive candle-power 
he conducted his guests to a secluded 
portion of the ground floor. But still 
his conscience so troubled him that he 
insisted upon sheltering them in sub- 
terranean regions, and he led them to 
the sub-cellar among the wine-casks. 
There, until far into the night, the Chief 
of Engineers, the military representa- 
tive on the Supreme War Council, and 
the secretary of war regaled one an- 
other with reminiscences begot by the 
extraordinary surroundings, and punc- 
tuated from time to time by explosions 



Secretary Baker at the Front 55 

on the street level above. Ten days 
later, walking into the grounds of the 
Invalides and inspecting the hundreds 
of captured trophies that lie in the 
Court d'Honneur, the secretary of 
war came upon two giant German air- 
planes, shot down in the raid which 
brought to a close his first day in Paris. 
The following day sufficing to com- 
plete the work necessary to be done at 
the capital, it was arranged to have our 
train leave the city late in the evening. 
The secretary of war was to go to the 
station from the home of Ambassador 
Sharp ; I was to go directly from the ho- 
tel. As I hurried from the Crillon, I 
brushed against a mud-spattered officer 
coming in and with difficulty recognized 
the features of Major General Glenn, 
commanding the National Army divi- 
sional cantonment at Chillicothe, Ohio, 
and who was then on the tour of inspec- 



56 Secretary Baker at the Front 

tion undertaken by all the command- 
ers of divisions training in America. 
When I rushed into him, General Glenn 
was finishing a long, hard automobile 
trip from our army headquarters, but 
on learning that the secretary of war 
v/as in the city, he left the hotel with me 
and had a brief visit with the secretary 
upon the station platform. At ten 
o'clock the train of General Pershing 
pulled out of Paris. 

That train, by the way, is a thing of 
beauty and a joy forever. One car has 
two bedrooms and a sizable conference- 
room. It accommodated Mr. Baker 
and General Pershing. Two others 
housed the staffs of the secretary and 
the commander-in-chief. A third car 
comprises a dining-room and kitchen. 
A long table running half the length of 
this car permits fifteen men to eat and 
to confer with ease. When the Boche 



Secretary Baker at the Front 57 

have sued for peace and the final bugle 
blows, and the contributing factors are 
being allocated, I hope that an annalist 
may arise in the land, may point out the 
chef -de-luxe of that car, and may render 
to him the things that are his. There is 
also a car for the representatives of the 
press. On this occasion, there were 
representatives of the three American 
press associations on the trip, together 
with an army photographer, all in 
charge of Frederick Palmer — Major 
Palmer for the period of the emergency. 
Immediately behind the engine is a 
freight car with two high-powered auto- 
mobiles, which permit rapid excursions 
into the adjacent country. This estab- 
lishment gives to the American Com- 
mander a mobility that is a by-word 
among his troops. For the next five 
nights and for many nights intermit- 
tently thereafter, that train was to be 



58 Secretary Baker at the Front 

our home. By sleeping aboard it, and 
by traveling from point to point be- 
tween darkness and dawn, we were en- 
abled to have virtually all the daylight 
hours for inspection purposes. 

Assigned by the French to have 
charge of the secretary's train and to act 
generally as a liaison officer, was Cap- 
tain de Marenchens. Some day, as a 
mental exercise, I hope to devise a ques- 
tion which Marenchens cannot answer 
or to suggest a task he cannot perform. 
But the task will not be simple. For 
sheer resourcefulness and for volume of 
information, he stands apart. ''It is 
easy" is his invariable reply to a request, 
and he seems to make it so. 

The seacoast was reached on the 
morning following the exit from Paris. 
During that day and the following one, 
which was spent at a second seaport 250 
miles away, the daylight hours and parts 



Secretary Baker at the Front 59 

of the nights were completely occupied 
with the inspection of a bewildering 
array of military enterprises, grouped in 
the Base Section. 

Later we visited the Intermediate 
Section for three days of observation. 
Proceeding along the lines of communi- 
cation, we came upon vast storage areas, 
threaded by hundreds of miles of ti^acks 
and covered by acres of buildings, filled 
with apparently inexhaustible supplies 
of food and clothing and equipage to 
protect the American forces in case of 
their being temporarily cut off from the 
distant home base. The inspection of 
such places was usually made from 
rough wooden benches built upon flat 
cars shunted slowly through the maze 
of tracks which feed the storage spaces. 
There was some delay encountered in 
entering the first city in this storage 
area, for the band at the station rose to 



60 Secretary Baker at the Front 

the acme of acclamation, and incident- 
ally halted the entire procession by play- 
ing all the verses of the American na- 
tional anthem twice in the march of 
eighty feet between the train and the 
station gate. 

While the other globe-trotters 
boarded the train late in the afternoon, 
I remained behind at a Regulating 
Headquarters, securing some maps of 
adjacent territory. When I reached 
the station, the train had gone. In- 
quiry revealed the uncertain informa- 
tion that it had started east. An auto- 
mobile was commandeered and a pursuit 
started. A mile and a half away at a 
freight yards we caught sight of it, but 
now it was moving in the opposite direc- 
tion, toward the depot we had left. A 
hurried return to the station was made. 
No train was visible. Further search 
revealed that it had sought out a siding 



Secretary Baker at the Front 61 

three quarters of a mile west. A mod- 
erately profane and excessively perspir- 
ing scribe left the auto and the highway, 
and proceeded along the railroad ties, 
that he might lie across the track should 
that train attempt to prolong its St. 
Vitus' dance, which it did not. But for 
sheer perversity, a raikoad train Some- 
place in France can be almost human. 

Those inspection days were strenuous 
sessions. Usually there were a consid- 
erable number of projects to be seen; at 
each of them a new group of officers 
would be met, and the combination of 
physical freshness and mental alertness 
in each group was depressing upon the 
endurance, but stimulating to the souls, 
of us whose spirit was always willing for 
more inspection and yet more, but 
whose flesh was sometimes weak. Be- 
tween the portions of the task that were 
accomplished on foot there were jour- 



62 Secretary Baker at the Front 

neys by automobile, sometimes short, 
invigorating trips, sometimes long, 
cramping tours; always expeditions 
through quaint French agricultural vil- 
lages, where dwellings are not located 
adjacent to the land that is tilled, but 
are centralized at the cross-roads, and 
where the questioning faces of those too 
old or too young to be at the front 
looked up inquiringly from their inter- 
rupted tasks as the line of brown ma- 
chines, marked with the same colors as 
their own tricolor, swept by. On those 
trips there was one thing the rest of us 
got which never came to the secretary, 
though he did not seem to mind. It was 
the dust. Behind the leading machine 
in which he rode it arose in great clouds 
for the rest of us, to veneer us outwardly 
and to choke us inwardly. At the end 
of a dry day our appearance indicated 
that an attempt had been made to 



Secretary Baker at the Front 63 

camouflage us into blending with the 
landscape. The day-book of the trip, 
brief though its record is, gives some 
conception of what made up those 
periods of sight-seeing. I select a few 
random days : 

March 12. Up at seven o'clock. Secretary 
motors to Versailles for two-hour conference 
with General Bliss, beginning at nine. Secre- 
tary returns to Paris for noon conference with 
General Foch, Chief of Staff. 

1 o'clock. Secretary has as his luncheon 
guests at Crillon: General Bliss; General 
Pershing; General Black; Colonel Newton, 
liaison officer with the French; Colonel Connor 
and Colonel Tracy of General Pershing's staff; 
Commander White, U. S. N.; Colonel Brett, the 
secretary's aide; Captain de Marenchens, French 
liaison officer with us; and Captain Baker, the 
brother of the secretary. 

1 :30. Conference with Mr. Kearney, Paris 
representative of Committee on Public Infor- 
mation. 

2:00 o'clock. Secretary goes to headquarters 
of American Red Cross. 

2:45. Secretary calls upon ex-Premier 
Viviani. 



64 Secretary Baker at the Front 

4:00 o'clock. Conference with M. Reinach. 

4:25. Conference with Wythe Williams and 
Reginald Wright Kauffman. 

4:30. Conference with Mr. John Clarke, 
representative of Post-OfEce Department in 
France. 

5:00 o'clock. Conference with Arthur T. 
Crosby of Treasury Department. 

7:30. Dinner at residence of Ambassador 
Sharp. 

10:00 o'clock. Train leaves Paris. 

March 14. Up at 6:45. Shortly after seven, 

train reached . Greeted at station by sous- 

prefet and committee of army officers. Take to 
autos and inspect remount station; Camp No. 1, 
which to-day has in it more than 10,000 re- 
cently disembarked men; motor assembling- 
shops; a base-hospital; docks No. 2, No. 10, 
No. 1 ; locomotive assembling-plant. Buffet 
luncheon at home of General Lewis; spent fore 
part of afternoon in going over adjacent storage 
project; on to , where a remarkable hos- 
pital community is being constructed with the 
buildings of an old French normal school as a 
nucleus. Return to train for dinner. In eve- 
ning secretary goes to home of General Lewis; 
I go to naval headquarters. 

March 16. Train reaches 8 a. m. 

Train is cut in half to enable it to negotiate the 




OS fa 



Secretary Baker at the Front Qb 

heavy grades to flying-fields of Third Aviation 
Instruction Center; railway laid by Signal 
Corps. Seventy-five machines in air greet the 
secretary. Mr. Baker is interviewed for the St. 
Patrick's day issue of "Plane News/' the camp 
paper, which appears resplendent in green ink 
before the secretary leaves the field. Inspect 
living quarters and main camp, hangars, flying- 
field, machine-gun school, aero engineering de- 
partment, and aero supply department. Flights 
include aerial formations of fifteen machines, 
group evolutions, and aerial combat. 

Shortly after noon our train picks us up and 
brings us at 4 p. m. to . Inspect motor- 
supply depot, camp hospital, railroad repair- 
shops, fuel storage-depot, barracks, store- 
houses, stables, and guard-houses. Left at 9:14« 
p. M. 

March 17. Sunday. Arrived at 8 a. m., 

and at once start on inspection trip covering 
the regulating headquarters and its adjacent 
warehouses and railroad yards. This station is 
midway between the storehouses at the coast and 
the men at the front, and is to carry more than 
two-weeks' supply for our first million men. 
At 12:30 we board the train, eat lunch on it, 
and reach at 1 :30. Here the Expedition- 
ary Force has in operation various splendid 
training-schools. The secretary first visits the 



66 Secretary Baker at the Front 

headquarters of the army schools^ where he ad- 
dresses the instructors; then he hurriedly looks 
at the general staff college, the line school, the 
engineer school, and the sanitary school. Leav- 
ing the city, the party goes a few miles into the 
country to view some carrier-pigeon lofts and 
some trench-motor and anti-aircraft pieces. 
Returning at five o'clock, find that the city offi- 
cials have arranged a reception for the secretary. 
Among the officers there he meets ex-Secretary 
of War Stimson and ex-Assistant Secretary 
Breckenridge. By taking the train again at 5 :30 
the party reaches the American headquarters in 
time for a late dinner, after which the secretary 
goes into conference with General Crozier and 
various officers of the Expeditionary Force. 

In defense of that diary, I hasten to 
add that it is not all as prosaic and as 
plodding as those foregoing pages. 
The long days of inspection tours and 
the drear sight of devastated places 
were brightened at times by a saving 
touch of cheerfulness. There was al- 
ways a chuckle in observing the tactics 
of Colonel de Chambrun, whose duties 



Secretary Baker at the Front 67 

included the securing of accommoda- 
tions at times when the train or hotels 
were not available, and where, near the 
front, it was not discreet to harbor the 
secretary in centers of population that 
are the targets for air attacks. At the 
village where the stop was to be made, 
wherever it might be, Chambrun would 
inquire as to the location and the owner 
of '*the chateau," the finest of the houses 
in the community. Without further 
formality, the colonel would gravely in- 
form the worthy householder that he 
would have as guests for the night the 
secretary of war and his party. 

Those who are of evil mind will say 
that method smacks of Prussianism. 
The first answer to that is the reply of 
the aged French peasant who was taunt- 
ingly asked how a country could claim 
shares in the fruits of democracy which 
had taken Napoleon back to itself and 



68 Secretary Baker at the Front 

had made of him an emperor. "You 
answer yourself," the old man replied. 
He was our emperor; we made him 
such. Perhaps, when all has been said, 
the most fundamental right of a demo- 
cratic people is the right to misgovern 
itself. 

There is a second answer to that 
charge ; or perhaps it is only an amplifi- 
cation of the first. It comes in the let- 
ters which followed the secretary after 
he had gone out of those villages, writ- 
ten by the families whose guest he was 
and testifying to that touch which makes 
the whole world kin, or as much of it as 
is of good will. Could I paint but a 
single scene of France, it would not be 
the once gay, now somber, boulevards of 
Paris ; it would not show the pomp and 
panoply of marching thousands; it 
would not picture the young recruits 
who even now in the fourth year of it 



Secretary Baker at the Front 69 

go out singing, and with *'Vive la Lyon" 
chalked between the garlands on their 
cars; it would not represent the ruins 
where the ravages of ruthlessness have 
taken heavy toll: it would be a bit of 
Baccarat, an antiquated village of Lor- 
raine, which hears unceasingly the 
belching guns a few miles to the north, 
but which yet lives its life. Soldiers are 
there, not alone the blue-clad ones of 
France, but others from afar who call 
themselves men of the Rainbow ; and in 
the old chateau lives M. Michot — 
Michot the glassmaker. Over and over 
again I like to recall the simple, homely 
hospitality of the aged glassmaker and 
his delightful family when his home was 
the stopping-place of the secretary of 
war, his touching farewells as we left, 
and the gifts of glassware which came 
after us. When all the world seems to 
run red, it is good to know that M. 



70 Secretary Baker ^ at the Front 

Michot of Baccarat lives, and others 
like him. 

The practice of billeting troops and 
officials in the village homes of France 
is, of course, the miiversal custom. As 
each correspondent reports, the houses, 
like the railroad cars, indicate by a 
placard their maximum accommoda- 
tions for "hommes and cheveaux." 
These same places furnish shelters 
sometimes in air raids, though not so 
secure as the "abris." Nevertheless an 
impressionable young American officer, 
whose name is here deleted for value re- 
ceived, in passing through a certain vil- 
lage in Champagne, saw two young 
ladies whom it was most easy to look 
upon; their comeliness entranced him, 
as did also a placard upon the house in 
which they lived, saying: 

6 hommes 

2 cheveaux 



Secretary Baker at the Front 71 

As I remember it, he was somewhat 
profane about the possibihty of having 
cheveaux sheltered in that domicile with 
the resultant waste of the fair loveliness 
that dwelt there. But he made mental 
note of all the circumstances. After 
what, according to my Gregorian mode 
of reckoning time, was about two 
weeks, but to his Cupidian method was 
some four months, had sped by or 
dragged on (depending on how you 
look at it), something happened to 
prove that the gods work in mysteri- 
ous ways. The same officer was over- 
taken near the same village by an air- 
raid. He was somewhat more than half 
a mile away from the house of his 
dreams, and there were some dozens of 
shelters between him and it. But that 
seemed to have no effect on him. The 
track coach of his college days would 
have wept for joy had he been present 



72 Secretary Baker at the Front 

to witness the sprinting of that half 
mile. The runner later admitted to me 
that he had with him all the way a men- 
tal pacemaker in the thought of one or 
two dumb driven cheveaux beating him 
to that shelter. But as some philoso- 
pher has sagely remarked, there is 
usually some one in the neighborhood 
whose chief avocation is taking the joy 
out of life. In this case the portion was 
doubled; there were two such persons. 
They, too, bore some signs of exhaus- 
tion, and as our hero's hobnailed shoes 
clattered along the cobblestones and ap- 
proached the corner that was to start 
him on the last lap and put him in view 
of his goal, he ran into the other two, 
bound in the opposite direction. And 
one of the two made speech, saying: 
"It's no use, buddy — ^we're just comin' 
from there; nine fellows are in there 
now and it ain't healthy while the Boche 



Secretary Baker at the Front 73 

are spittin' fire to form a waitin' line 
outside behind the horse that they put 
out. We're lookin' for a hole where 
we can see the rest of the fellows comin' 
up — and goin' back." Was ever a 
more dismal end to a budding romance? 
What reason remained to seek safety 
after a thing like that had come into a 
man's life? 

The Commander of the American 
Expeditionary Forces issued, some 
months back, a general-order on opti- 
mism, constituting an official aid to 
cheerfulness and an authoritative denial 
that the melancholy days are come. It 
is well. Sometimes one needs such a 
temperament stimulant after he has 
spent a day dodging the output of the 
shops that little Bertha found on her 
hands when old man Krupp shoved off 
in 1902 for a voyage down the Styx to 
meet a certain ally of his imperial mas- 



74 Secretary Baker at the Front 

ter. One night between explosions I 
asked Frederick Palmer if he would n't 
tell me, out of the goodness of his heart, 
something cheerful and chipper, were 
it true or false. He told me he would, 
and I believed him. He told me that 
the mental attitude I should cultivate 
when each of those explosions seemed to 
let go just under my bed was the con- 
sciousness that statistics have shown 
that a man is hit by only one missile in 
80— or was it 800 or 8000? That 
seemed like a holy and humane thought, 
and great was the comfort I was de- 
riving from it when he interrupted my 
reflections. 

"In the interest of the whole truth," 
he said, "I ought to add that in the last 
three days you 've been missed at least 
500 times, and if the laws of averages 
and gravitation have n't been repealed, 
you 're due to be hit by the next six." 



Secretary Baker at the Front 75 

There would be less grief in being 
harassed by that shell-fire if a fellow's 
— well, say, his sweetheart, were look- 
ing on appreciatively. There would n't 
be many amateur theatrical entertain- 
ments if there were only dress rehearsals 
and no audiences of admiring parents. 
College foot-ball would become a lost 
art were it not for the feminine pres- 
ences in the grand stand who view the 
team as some one man surrounded by 
ten assistants. In the big game Over 
There, except for fellow-workmen of 
the male species, one is virtually a 
stranger in a strange land. The village 
paper is historic when it comes. Let- 
ters are so long in transit that one won- 
ders if the writer feels now, as, let us 
say, she did when months ago she wrote 
it. And an unsentimental censor can 
make a great shortstop. Altogether 
one develops a far-away feeling, which 



76 Secretary Baker at the Front 

is not greatly minimized by the preva- 
lence of a strange tongue among the 
adjacent natives. True, the cables, at 
thirty-seven cents a word, remain, but 
they are not always an unalloyed ad- 
vantage. An undeciphered message 
came to us one night with the only un- 
coded part of it, the word *'Wilson," at 
the bottom. All the army codes had 
failed dismally in giving to it a mean- 
ing. None of us have much sympathy 
for the man who conceals his thoughts 
with words, but it is scarcely fair to 
the Commander-in-Chief in the White 
House to have him dictate a message in 
perfect diction, only to have it so 
mesmerized by a secretive code-writer 
that the best of professional treatment 
cannot bring it back to rationality. A 
last-ditch suggestion favored giving the 
thing to the navy. Strangely enough, 
it responded instanter to the persuasion 



Secretary Baker at the Front 77 

of a naval code. It was a simple, al- 
most crass message, which by some 
freak of delivery, possibly induced by 
the signature, had been given to the 
Secretary of War, sent to the com- 
mander of the port where we were, 
signed by Admiral Wilson of the naval 
forces in France, and informing the 
recipient that he might expect 150 tons 
of beef to arrive any day! 

During the course of a number of 
trips abroad, Mr. Baker had used the 
term "haircloth" by cable to indicate 
the fact that whatever members of the 
family were at the sending end were 
well, and to receive the same cabled in- 
telligence regarding the remainder of 
the family in America. Now, the Eu- 
ropean address of a person moving as 
rapidly as did the secretary of war was 
rather a complicated thing, and often 
the superscription required as many 



78 Secretary Baker at the Front 

words as the body of the cable contained. 
Adding to the bulk of the necessary di- 
rections was sometimes the requirement 
of successively forwarding the same 
cable in an attempt to catch the ad- 
dressee. There was nothing unnatural, 
therefore, in our receiving a cablegram 
which had been forwarded three times 
and had accumulated a voluminous ar- 
ray of receipts and references. The 
message itself consisted of one word 
and each receiver of the cable en route 
averred unwillingly that he was unable 
to "crack" it. The one who finally 
handed it to us rather sheepishly ad- 
mitted that he could make nothing more 
intelligible than "haircloth" out of the 
portion of the message beneath the half 
pages of re-addressings. 

I am glad, at times, that the diary of 
that trip does not talk. Its indiscre- 
tions could be monstrous. But some of 



Secretary Baker at the Front 79 

its gossip it might retail without im- 
prudence. For instance: 

March 12. Paris. The secretary is the de- 
spair of the secret service men. His goings and 
comings are so unannounced and so informal that 
officers of the Intelligence Service have pro- 
tested, saying that his going through the streets 
alone and unprotected is unwise and dangerous. 

March 27. Paris. Charles W. Grasty, the 
journalist, walked into General Pershing's house 
and we reminisced. When in the middle of a 
week in November of 1915 I was catapulted out 
of law school into the City Club of Cleveland, 
my first job was to induce a speaker to come to 
Cleveland to talk about the war. Grasty had 
just then come home to America, and agreed by 
long-distance telephone to make the speech be- 
fore the week ended. On the strength of that I 
introduced myself to the mayor, who promised 
to attend a private luncheon with Grasty. 

(The mayor referred to was Newton D. 
Baker.) 

March 28. The secretary and I, he incog- 
nito, patronized a French village barber shop. 
Some of our soldiers had told us that submission 
to a French tonsorialist was comparable to a 
major operation, but this is exaggerated. There 
was something different about that shop, and as 



80 Secretary Baker at the Front 

we waited for the rest of the village to have its 
locks trimmed and its jowls scraped, I tried to 
identify the characteristics that distinguished 
it. The barber shops which I have met are 
characterized by the mechanism of their chairs 
and the colored liquids in many bottles. This 
shop had neither and had to be taken to some 
degree on faith. We read all the back issues of 
the French magazines that correspond to our 
barber shop periodicals, passed a vote of censure 
on the brilliantine which illuminated the barber's 
hair and mustache, and laughed secretly in Eng- 
lish when a man of not less than sixty years had 
every hair clipped off" his head and went out 
looking nude. 

March 29. American Headquarters. Gen- 
eral Pershing told me at night that for the sake 
of the secretary's health we had best urge him 
to slow his schedule and to remain indoors for a 
day. A succession of rainy days, and daily ex- 
cursions by the secretary, have made the General 
fearful of the radical change from more seden- 
tary work at Washington. Of course I shall 
urge the secretary to follow this good counsel, 
but I know the passively bored look that will 
greet my suggestion that he stay indoors and 
rest. 

March SO. American Headquarters. The 
secretary listened patiently to my advice and 



Secretary Baker at the Front 81 

prescription, looked passively bored, and then 
drove a score of miles through a driving rain to 
the headquarters of Major General Clarence Ed- 
wards. The commander of the Twenty-sixth has 
his headquarters in what appears to be a feudal 
castle, built on the brink of a huge ridge which 
towers above the surrounding country, dominat- 
ing the valley lands for miles around. 

April 5. Paris. This day, from Captain 
Adams (known to fame as F. P. A. of the Con- 
ning Tower) I borrowed a bread-card to secure 
at a public hotel an allotment of war bread for 
myself and one — the one being a young lady I 
had known in Washington and unexpectedly 
found here. Adams gave me the ticket but he 
also chanced to be at the hotel and proceeded to 
embarrass me beyond speech by inquiring in 
loudly pitched tones as to the source of the staff 
of life for my party, whether the unconsumed 
portion of his ticket would be returned to him, 
and whether it was my custom to find subsist- 
ence in that fashion. When he had finished in- 
sulting me, he asked my fellow-forager, whom he 
had not known, if she cared to go to a theatre 
with him. Luckily she knew no French, dra- 
matic or otherwise, and that question did n't 
come to an issue. I think I '11 speak to Adams* 
wife about this when we get back. 

April 6. Paris. Late this afternoon the sec- 



82 Secretary Baker at the Front 

retary went out with me to purchase pipes. 
There is vast entertainment for one to whom a 
good cigar is merely a smoke, in watching a 
connoisseur of the weed insisting upon a straight 
stem, a knotless bowl, a pull bit, and the other 
qualities that constitute a smokable pipe. 

April 7. We have accumulated a considerable 
portion of queer paper money, issued locally by 
what possibly corresponds to our chambers of 
commerce, and passable only in the locality of 
its issue. Fancy coming into Grand Central 
Terminal with a bulging pocketful of worthless 
Jersey money. 

The secretary has an inordinate liking for 
articles made of pewter. So far as I know or 
he remembers, he has never bought any of it; 
but any musty shop along the street with a win- 
dow full of cobwebs and pewter will catch his 
attention and arrest his footsteps. 

The pursuit of cheese is the most pronounced 
habit to which General Black succumbs. In 
any form and at any place "fromage" will at- 
tract his eye and nose. When we were at Amer- 
ican Headquarters, the secretary lived at Gen- 
eral Pershing's house, while the Chief of Engi- 
neers remained at the "guest house," three blocks 
away. The first day of our stay the secretary 
announced his belief that General Black would 
not be able to make the j ourney between the two 



Secretary Baker at the Front 83 

houses. A cheese-monger had set up his estab- 
lishment midway between the two dwellings, and 
the secretary was quite positive that the General 
could not pass that point in going either direc- 
tion. 

By way of marking the entrance of 
the secretary into the advanced section, 
the army schools staged a reahstic and 
sonorous simulation of battle opera- 
tions. Of it the diary says: 

Before the coming of zero hour the earth shook 
with the effect of a barrage from machine-guns, 
heavy trench mortars, light Stokes and 37's. 
Meanwhile the attacking troops had formed into 
assaulting platoons in waves, cleaning-up par- 
ties, and support platoons. At zero hour the in- 
fantry moved forward under the protection of a 
barrage, accompanied by mortars and 37's. The 
German defenses consisted of firing trenches, 
support trenches, strong points, and pill-boxes. 
The last were demolished, but enemy strong 
points held up the advance and brought all in- 
fantry weapons into play, with hand-bombs 
working on the flanks. After the strong points 
were rushed and captured by bombers, the at- 
tacking line moved forward to the first hostile 



84 Secretary Baker at the Front 

line, from which they signaled for a barrage 
upon enemy support trenches. When the Stokes 
mortars ceased firing and the machine-guns 
lifted, the troops moved forward to their final 
objective, the enemy's second line trenches, 
where they halted, sent patrols to the front, con- 
solidated the newly occupied trenches and 
erected wire in front of the positions. As a 
post-mortem measure, a so-called Chinese attack 
was demonstrated, and hostile reconnaissance 
airplanes were driven away. Lest there be any 
misapprehension, coolies have no part in a Chi- 
nese counter-attack. The only targets are life- 
size silhouettes. 

Immediately following the feigned 
battle, the automobile of the secretary 
of war, accompanied by one other ma- 
chine, slipped quietly by a side road out 
of the line that was returning to the 
American headquarters, and turned un- 
heralded in the direction of the real bat- 
tles. The secretary was bound for the 
front line. Early on the following 
morning the party was within hailing 
distance of No-Man's-Land, trudging 



Secretary Baker at the Front 85 

over the duck-boards of a narrow trench 
and headed in a course bearing toward 
the crown prince and his father. 

At least, it was said to be that direc- 
tion. But after traversing fifty yards 
of a maze of trenches, a self-respecting 
compass itself would hesitate to point 
in any direction without uncertainty. 

Unpopular above all things else at 
the front stands the unofficial civilian. 
When one gets inside the artillery arc 
the presence of civilians possessed of 
curiosity and in search of atmosphere 
becomes a definite deterrent to military 
success. We are less amenable to dis- 
cipline than men of the army, we are 
unacquainted with the precaution that 
must be observed, and we require the 
services of one or several officers to keep 
us from getting lost. The presence 
even of military officers of high rank 
close to the front is not in all respects 



86 Secretary Baker at the Front 

beneficial. Some months ago when va- 
rious major-generals commanding divi- 
sions in America made trips to the bat- 
tle-front and were taken into the first 
lines, together with the staffs which 
accompany officers of that rank, there 
was a noticeable increase of hostile fire 
upon our lines induced by the move- 
ments of the visiting groups. An old 
sergeant who was also something of a 
philosopher, remarked, "No woman 
wants company on her wash-day." 

Traveling along a trench three feet 
in width in a borrowed pair of shoes 
that are too small and a borrowed coat 
that is too large, gives to the traveler 
a brand-new set of emotions. Before 
him is a maze of barbed wire; behind 
him an inferno of artillery. Above 
him are sausage balloons with searching 
eyes ; below him sappers with busy shov- 
els; on one side are piles of hand- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 87 

grenades, on the other a grimly waiting 
Red Cross station. Trench psychology 
has no parallel ; it is a thing apart. 

Two days and a half were spent by 
the secretary at the far front. Noted 
in the annals for those days are these 
entries : 

March 18. On way to the front the secre- 
tary stopped at the headquarters of General de 
Castelnau, commanding the group of armies of 
the East. The general remarked upon the ex- 
cellent feeling between the French and Ameri- 
can soldiers, his confidence in the American 
troops, and his satisfaction with the work of the 
Rainbow, which is serving with his group of 
armies. 

March 19. The secretary got under way at 
5 :30 A. M. With him, in addition to his own 
party, were General Menoher, Col. MacArthur 
and Col. Hough of the 42nd Division. The 
party stopped en route to inspect the 3rd Bat- 
talion of the 166th Regiment, and the secretary 
made an informal talk to the men. 

The route lay to Benamenil, where an escort 
formed to take the secretary out to the farthest 
wires near Blemery, by way of the village of 



88 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Domjevin. But Domjevin was undergoing such 
a fierce bombardment at the time that General 
Menoher decided the party could not go through 
there. Returning to Benamenil, the secretary, 
with Col. de Chambrun as guide, went first to 
Badonvillers and thence into the front line. The 
point where the secretary penetrated to the tip 
of the line was northeast of Badonvillers and 
east of the farm of le Chimais. 

The first glimpse over the dead end 
of the trench farthest to the front is a 
rather disappointing experience. It is 
disappointing, perhaps, in the same 
fashion that Mammoth Cave and Ni- 
agara Falls and the Capitol are disap- 
pointing — our imaginations have been 
so fed up by the prophetic promises of 
unconservative publicity and by first 
impressions at a plastic age from early 
school-books, that anything would be 
a disillusionment. Sometimes I won- 
der if the judgment seat and the golden 
stairs can live up to their advance no- 
tices. Some there will be, I '11 venture. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 89 

who will be searching for paste in the 
diamond streets and rubbing the steps 
to see if they tarnish. The pomp and 
circumstance of war do not obtrude 
themselves upon an amateur at the far- 
thest front. The landscape, during a 
lull, seems too quiet and innocent-look- 
ing to be loaded brim- full of hell; and 
recurrent admonitions of your guide are 
necessary before you keep your head 
ducked and step briskly across the ex- 
posed places. Enemy snipers and pa- 
trols do not operate with band concerts 
and parades as heralds of their ap- 
proach. The quiet, swarthy landscape, 
marked only by a line of wire three 
hundred yards away, seems so passive 
and unthreatening that it is difficult to 
believe that latent death could lie in 
every foot of it. You feel a disbelief in 
the statement of the sentry that a hos- 
tile sharp-shooter lies under that piece 



90 Secretary Baker at the Front 

of tin a good stone's throw distant. 
But you don't doubt strongly enough 
to go out and kick it over to see. 

Leaving the line of battle, the secre- 
tary journeyed to Luneville, Nancy 
and TouL At Luneville, after ad- 
dressing officers of the 165th Infantry, 
he went with General Bazeler to visit 
a number of American wounded. One 
of them was badly gassed, but there was 
a light in his eyes and his smile was good 
to see as he told the secretary "my lieu- 
tenant was decorated yesterday for 
bravery and it almost made me well." 

Early on the next morning the secre- 
tary joined the 2nd Division and vis- 
ited a temporary barracks on a wooded 
hillside, where the Marine Brigade, un- 
der General Doyen, had its headquar- 
ters. Thence he hastened to the vil- 
lage of Treveray, beside which a long 
and rugged hill leads to a lofty plateau. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 91 

With General Pershing, General Lig- 
gett and Colonel Hines, the secretary 
there reviewed the 1st Brigade of the 
1st Division, the initial one sent to 
France. It had just come out of the 
trenches and into rest billets where the 
secretary visited it, and already it had 
the look and bearing and feeling of 
veterans. 

Here occurred a sad and sizable trag- 
edy, in that a snapshot was taken which 
purported to show three officers sa- 
luting the flag and the secretary of war 
not saluting. An enlargement of the 
photograph shows his hand was raised 
to remove his hat two seconds later; 
and a picture taken from a point 
squarely behind the secretary would 
have shown that the snapshot was taken 
at a moment when the flag was not yet 
directly before him. But several doz- 
ens of explanations were required to 



92 Secretary Baker at the Front 

satisfy as many good citizens that the 
snapshot was not conclusive. 

In descending the hillside following 
the review, General Black and I inad- 
vertently set foot upon the wrong road, 
and its tortuous windings into the val- 
ley led us so far astray from our course 
that we found ourselves at the foot of 
the hill in the village of St. Amand, 3.5 
kilometres from Treveray, into which 
we trudged picturesquely and peniten- 
tially, he astride a slow-going horse, I 
mudspattered and afoot beside him. 

We followed the secretary to the vil- 
lage of Domremy, the birthplace of 
Joan of Arc. We found there the lit- 
tle home of the Maid of Orleans, with 
the statue in front of it showing Joan 
being led from her paternal roof by 
the Genius of France, and, farther along 
the road, the basilica upon the spot 
where she is said to have heard the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 93 

voices which summoned her to her work. 
A quaint old woman showed the secre- 
tary through the house, which is on the 
edge of the village, flanked as of old 
by a green valley to the south and by 
picturesque hills, but girdled also now 
with an array of French artillery await- 
ing its call to the front. One is glad 
to have seen it all, despite Herr Bae- 
deker's warning that "there is little to 
see at Domremy, which is a village of 
the humblest character." 

Hard driving brought the party to 
American headquarters in time for 
dinner. The secretary spent the eve- 
ning in conference with Postal officials 
on the mail situation among the soldiers 
and at ten o'clock we boarded the train 
for another night of travel. 

On the morning of Thursday, March 
21, simultaneously with the opening 
phase of the German offensive, the sec- 



94 Secretary Baker at the Front 

retary of war was proceeding from 
American headquarters on a curiously 
timely and unusual trip to the head- 
quarters of the Allies, paralleling the 
raging battle-line. At noon he had 
reached the headquarters of General 
Petain, who was then quartered in an 
ancient palace built by one of the fa- 
mous kings of France. To the east 
the drum-fire of the artillery constituted 
a solid volume of sound, without any 
interval between reports. Neverthe- 
less, the commander of the French, 
though prophesying accurately the 
length and intensity of the battle, 
seemed the calmest man at his head- 
quarters. *'This is the day of the di- 
vision commanders," he said as we left ; 
"to-morrow the corps commanders will 
have work; and on the next day there 
will be something for me to do." Here 
the train was left and automobiles were 



Secretary Baker at the Front 95 

substituted. Twice during the after- 
noon's drive it was necessary to change 
the route of the machines when roads 
which were to have been traversed be- 
came targets for enemy shell-fire. 

Dusk was settling as the headquar- 
ters of Sir Douglas Haig and the Brit- 
ish Armies were reached. Several 
miles farther into the country was the 
residence of the field marshal. Here 
dinner was had, and a conference last- 
ing long into the evening, at which time 
the train was substituted for the motors, 
and the northward journey was again 
taken up. The station in Belgium at 
which it was proposed to stop was un- 
der heavy bombardment on the morn- 
ing of March 22, and the journey by 
train was ended at another point. But 
automobiles quickly carried the party 
to the simple country home of the king. 

All the stories which have been 



96 Secretary Baker at the Front 

printed do not overdraw the picture of 
Albert, the tired and careworn king, 
weighed down by the multitude of a 
people's woes, and burdened with the 
greatest sorrow in history; but sus- 
tained by the still, small voice that has 
sounded as a clarion call to his people, 
and glorified by a cosmopolitanism that 
endears Albert, King of the Belgians, 
as much to Americans as to his own peo- 
ple. 

England was next on the itinerary. 
A fog as thick as London's own stopped 
all cross-Channel traffic. During all 
of an afternoon we waited for a change 
of elements, and remained at Boulogne 
over night. On the following morning 
General Black, Major Palmer and I 
were exercising ourselves through the 
city when an excited officer rushed up 
to us saying that the others of the party 
were aboard a ship in the harbor and 




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Secretary Baker at the Front 97 

were expected to sail momentarily. 
We made a thoroughly undignified but 
surpassingly speedy trio as we broke 
for the train, gathered our belongings 
with one sweep of our respective arms 
and sprinted down the dock with that 
entreating expression on our faces 
which expects the gangplank to be with- 
drawn with fifty yards yet to go. But, 
perversely enough, it was not with- 
drawn and we went aboard. Per- 
versely enough, again, the ship had no 
intention of crossing the Channel, and 
admitted no responsibility for un- 
founded rumors that sailings would be 
resumed. We therefore quit the ship, 
the dock, and the city, returning along 
the coast to Calais, where passage to 
Dover was secured in mid-afternoon. 
Greeting the secretary on his arrival at 
Dover was Admiral Keyes, later the 
hero of the Zeebrugge and Ostend raids. 



98 Secretary Baker at the Front 

We reached London in time for din- 
ner, and the secretary took up his abode 
at the American Embassy. 

The early closing of London shops 
and the early darkening of London 
streets has a tendency, like a curfew, to 
cause one to look somewhat attentively 
after the business in hand. The way 
of strangers in London is further made 
more simple, if less interesting, by the 
fact that scarcity of fuel has made sight- 
seeing and pleasure-missions taboo. 
So the stay of the secretary of war in 
England's capital could be made nat- 
urally most brief and official. Sunday 
and Monday were spent conferring with 
the chiefs who direct the destinies of 
Great Britain. 

Early Tuesday morning, March 26, 
the Channel was crossed again, this time 
in company with thousands of young 
Englishmen returning to help stop the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 99 

drive which threatened Ypres and 
Amiens. 

The station at Boulogne had been 
heavily bombed in the absence of the 
party in England, and there were signs 
of wreckage about the car of the secre- 
tary of war when he returned to it. 
That bit of ruin was prophetic of what 
was to be met all the way from the Eng- 
lish Channel to the French capital, for 
the route lay through Abbeville and 
Amiens, and the attack of the Germans 
was at its height. Pitifully prolonged 
lines of refugees dotted the dusty roads, 
and there was added affliction in the 
knowledge that many of these people 
had been fugitives before from those 
same lands, and had gone back again 
to their little farms a year ago and had 
tilled the soil and planted their new 
crops, only to flee once more at the 
approach of the Hun of hate. With 



100 Secretary Baker at the Front 

them was carried every conceivable va- 
riety of impedimenta: a bird-cage, a 
fowl or two, a musical instrmnent, a 
market basket, a crudely fashioned 
pack. Most of them were limited to 
what could be carried in their two hands 
and on their backs. But here and there 
was one who pushed a baby-carriage or 
tramped beside a cart drawn by a 
shaggy horse too poor to be comman- 
deered for cavalry purposes by the Gov- 
ernment. Now and then there were 
eyes that were dimmed with tears; 
sometimes there were those that were 
wide with fear ; many among them that 
were dulled with weariness. But there 
was not a voice we heard that spoke of 
complaint or capitulation. Force may 
take the physical possessions of the 
French, but it does not break the heart 
of France. 

On Thursday the secretary again was 



Secretary Baker at the Front 101 

at the American headquarters. Good 
Friday he spent in the field with the 
troops. Some of the troops of one di- 
vision — New England men — ^had gath- 
ered in a chapel beside a village church- 
yard; and the secretary was speaking 
to the men in that cold and damp little 
roadside church when at the same hour 
in Paris at another church, where an- 
other group was gathered, a shell from 
the long-range guns of the enemy 
crashed through the roof and snuffed 
out the lives of seventy-four among 
those at their devotions. 

The start for Italy was made on the 
following day, and Easter Sunday was 
spent above the snow-line of the Alps. 
Monday brought us to the military 
headquarters of the Italians, and there 
were conferences with General Diaz, 
commanding the Italian armies, with 
the head of the American Military Mis- 



102 Secretary Baker at the Front 

sion to Italy, and with the American 
Ambassador, who had come north to 
meet the secretary. 

At the close of a dull, damp day we 
entered the canals of Venice — Venice 
that once had been the playhouse of 
the world and the fairy-land of fantasy. 
Now it is stricken. But its chastise- 
ment has not dispelled the romance of 
its soft-colored buildings, or of its wa- 
tered ways, with the remnants of the 
grand flotilla of gondolas that once 
glided over them. 

Of the two hundred thousands who 
were once there, only a fifth remain, — 
the last of the Venetians ; and those few 
are hunted creatures ; for each full moon 
brings to the City of the Doges another 
fear of bombardment from the air. 
The art treasures long since have been 
taken elsewhere; the shops about the 
Campanile are closed and vacant. St. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 103 

Mark's is muffled in sand-bags. Flocks 
of pigeons still perch at evening in the 
arches of the church and keep their vigil 
by day upon the stones of Venice; but 
tourists are no longer there to feed 
them. The myriad lights that once 
gave living tints to the city's watery 
ways are gone. The regattas and the 
serenades that were the glory, of the 
Grand Canal have passed. But the 
American Red Cross has mothered what 
little of the community remains, and 
has guided the footsteps of those who 
have gone, preserving the cohesiveness 
of their associations that they may re- 
turn in happier days as homogeneous 
gi'oups. In the meantime, Venice will 
be the empty shell of things that were 
and are no more. 

After a day at Rome, a conference 
with the king, the premier, the minister 
of war, and the minister of the treasury, 



104 Secretary Baker at the Front 

the return to France along the enchant- 
ing Riviera was begun. Transporta- 
tion has become a major problem in 
Italy. Steep grades and sharp curves, 
low bridges and small tunnels, depleted 
rolling stock and exhausted coal-supply 
— all have combined to render difficult 
the movements of men and material. 
All but one of the cars of General 
Pershing's train were dispensed with to 
save fuel on the Italian leg of the jour- 
ney, but the poor combustion of "bri- 
quets" compelled many stops at way- 
side stations to accumulate steam for 
the next stage of the trip, and delayed 
our reaching Paris until late in the day 
of Thursday, the fourth of April. 

The reduction of our train to one car 
necessitated economies in space which 
played havoc with my habits of living. 
My compartment had in it a table 
which folded into the wall and a bed 



Secretary Baker at the Front 105 
which folded into an easy chair — so- 
called. With the loss of a buffet car, 
my room with its table became the only 
possible eating place, and it was so 
elected. Each night I had to await the 
departure of the last lingering hungerer 
before having my chair made into a bed. 
Each morning at a cruel hour a tugging 
at my bed clothes brought the sad tid- 
ings that my bed would have to be re- 
converted into a chair that the table 
might be unfolded and the preliminaries 
of breakfast arranged. Between meals 
there was just time to set out a goodly 
display of maps and papers before it 
became necessary to pack them away 
again in favor of food. Those few days 
to and from Italy made me nervously 
versatile after the fashion of a chame- 
leon or a politician or a kaleidoscope. 

In the capital was spent the first an- 
niversary of America's declaration of 



106 Secretary Baker at the Front 

war. The French essayed no formal 
celebration, but in the informality of 
their commemoration there was no lack 
of evidence that the hearts of the two 
republics beat in unison. In the Grand 
Salle des Fetes at the handsome Hotel 
de Ville the officials of the municipality 
and the nation gathered, almost over- 
looking the Church of St. Gervais 
where, a week before, the fire of the 
enemy had killed fourscore of worship- 
pers. The American ambassador was 
present, with the secretary of war and 
representatives of the American Mili- 
tary and Naval forces. Officials of the 
other Allies were gi^ouped about and 
the people of Paris were there in goodly 
numbers. There were greetings from 
the president of the municipal council 
and the minister of foreign affairs, with 
a response from Ambassador Sharp. 
And the departing guests passed again 



Secretary Baker at the Front 107 

under the shadow of St. Gervais, the 
place of God where the shell of the fofe 
had found its mark and its victims on 
the anniversary of Calvary. 

So passed the last day in Paris, and 
the next to the last in France. On the 
evening of the first day of the second 
year of our war, Premier Clemenceau 
and General Pershing journeyed to the 
station to bid farewell to the secretary 
of war. It was found then that another 
shell from their long-range guns had 
struck within thirty feet from his car. 
On the previous day, as the secretary 
drove through Paris, another had ex- 
ploded almost as close to him. But to 
us who had been a month in France and 
with its people, there was a kind of fu- 
tility about it. For air-raiders may do 
their work at night on hospitals and 
elsewhere, and the far-shooting gun 
may take its toll by day in or out of 



108 Secretary Baker at the Front 

churches, and the blue line of France 
may bend and strain, but the stout heart 
of France does not break. The singers 
of hymns of hate may yet learn in the 
last hands of the long game that hearts, 
not clubs, are trumps. 



Ill 

WHEEE GLORY DWELLS 

NO circumstance in the operations 
of the War Department has been 
productive of more weeping and gnash- 
ing of teeth by military men than work 
which keeps them in the United States 
or which brings them back from the 
fields of glory. So it was not a wholly 
happy group which traveled toward the 
French coast with the secretary of war 
in early April. One did n't wish at that 
time to see even the Statue of Liberty 
and that sky-line rising out of the hori- 
zon. But commands are commands. 

Our unhappiness was mitigated by 
the discovery on arriving at our port 
that our cruiser quarters were sup- 

109 



110 Secretary Baker at the Front 

planted by a relatively luxurious home 
aboard a returning transport. Once the 
great ship we boarded had belonged to 
the North German Lloyd Line. Now, 
as the Mt. Vernon, it bears its thousands 
over the ocean to iSght its former own- 
ers. In the transition from its old mas- 
ters to its new custodians, there had 
taken place a most thoroughgoing dam- 
aging of the ship's machinery. This 
was understandable. But the damage 
was done in such a consciously premedi- 
tated and diabolical fashion that, were it 
not for the clever foresight and close 
scrutiny of an American engineer, every 
seaman in the engine-room would have 
been scalded to death in live steam the 
first time the engines were reversed. 
That is past understanding. It is the 
trade-mark by which we recognize the 
thing we fight. 

What was formerly one of the pas- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 111 

senger dining-rooms on the huge craft 
has become now by day a place of gath- 
ering for the crew, by night a movie 
auditorium, and by Sundays a flag- 
draped chapel. The "Kinderzimmer," 
once the playing place of children, has 
become the one lighted place aboard the 
boat at night outside the chartroom. 

For the first two days of our trip 
there was no disrobing, and life- 
preservers were worn even when at- 
tempts were made to sleep in curious 
postures, U-boats were operating 
within an uncomfortable radius, two 
of them within thirty-five miles. If 
at such a time one's digestion becomes 
sufficiently deranged, he develops a 
new-found respect for that mellowed 
tale of the person who feared first that 
a submarine might attack him, and later, 
that it wouldn't. On the eastbound 
trip a colored trooper developed such an 



112 Secretary Baker at the Front 

innate, ingrained and thoroughgoing 
case of seasickness that he was found 
one day upon his knees praying long 
and aloud for relief, and demanding 
nothing less than that the Supreme Or- 
dainer of worldly things should leave 
His celestial throne and come down for 
a sufficient length of time to correct the 
internal arrangements of the defendant. 
"But, Lord," he added, as a sort of com- 
promising afterthought, to show that he 
was not unreasonable, "if you can't 
come right now in person, send your 
speediest angel." It was on seaboard 
that first I heard that story, and my 
laugh, I fear, was rather hollow; for at 
just that time I chanced to be living in 
a house largely of glass. 

In London I had picked up a copy of 
"Our Mutual Friend," and in reading 
it aboard the Mt, Vernon I experienced 
a sort of sympathetic vibration, as Dick- 




INSPECTION PARTY ON FLYING FIELD 

Watching planes flying three abreast, March 16, 1918 







WATCHING SOME OF THE SIXTY PLANES 

In the air at the same time, driven by U. S. Aviators, March 16, 1918 



Secretary Baker at the Front 113 

ens described the host of eorrespondents 
who showered their attentions and ap- 
peals on the newly enriched Noddy- 
Boffin. For be it known that this in- 
stitution of correspondence is the stock- 
in-trade of any private secretary. Nay, 
more — it is his night-mare. It is to him 
what the awl is to the shoemaker, what 
moonlight is to lovers, what water is 
to fishes, what black cigars are to poli- 
ticians. It is the mark of his trade, 
the sine qua non of his profession. 
Each day means to him so many bales 
of communications; Sundays become 
distinguished not by the worship of the 
Lord, but by the respite from corre- 
spondence. At times he leans toward 
agreement with Pope's dictum that 
"Heaven first taught letters for some 
wretch's aid." 

And what a wealth of themes they 
seem to find! No incident seems ever 



114 Secretary Baker at the Front 

to have occurred in any far-off place, 
but some subject-seeking traveler has 
seized the thing and pressed it to his 
bosom, to bring it home and make of it 
the matter for a rambling missive to a 
public servant. I know what fancy 
moved the Immortal Bard in "Love's 
Labor Lost," to make Moth say : 
"They have been at a great feast of 
languages and have stolen the scraps," 
and to make Costard reply: "O, they 
have lived long in the alms-basket of 
words." 

From our experiences of the preced- 
ing few weeks, I was prepared to ad- 
mit that there was a geographical or 
international similarity in the corre- 
spondence of men who constitute a fair 
target for the public eye, and pen. 
But I was not prepared to admit that 
there was a chronological similarity be- 
tween the post receipts of other years 



Secretary Baker at the Front 115 

and of to-day. I had confidence in the 
behef that there were at least some new 
types of psychic phenomena in the un- 
numbered thousands of missives that 
come to overwhelm a war secretary, for 
instance, in more varieties than ever a 
pickle-packer dreamed of. But Dick- 
ens wrote "Our Mutual Friend" in 
1865, and in that day he knew them all 
■ — his description of them might have 
been written yesterday. In that far 
day, even as now, there were fifty-seven 
churches to be built with half-crowns, 
forty-two parsonages to be repaired 
with shillings, seven-and-twenty organs 
to be bought with half -pence. Then 
also there were the suggestively be- 
friended individuals who sat in the pres- 
ence of an inkstand and a black chasm 
of despair when a still small voice 
(40%), or a gifted friend (60%), 
whispered the name that would bring 



116 Secretary Baker at the Front 

satisfaction to all desires. He might 
have included, also, the distant relatives 
who come to light from stygian dark- 
ness; the dealers in mud and in the 
slinging of it; the purveyors of super- 
patriotic songs and inspirational poetry. 
It seems that never a song is made or a 
lay is piped but its author urges its 
claim as a national anthem and his as 
laureate. 

I wonder if managing editors could 
be induced to run a box at the top of 
their Vox Populi columns, saying that 
marked and gratuitous copies were sent 
to all criticized individuals. It would 
save a deal of effort and postage to Con- 
stant Readers which they now spend in 
sending maligned individuals clippings, 
margin-marked by their own interpola- 
tions and emphasized with their very 
own underlinings. And while we are 
engaged in considerations on conserving 



Secretary Baker at the Front 117 

ink and energy, we ought not overlook 
those who adorn then' missives with 
cryptic and ejaculatory warnings and 
pleadings, designed to secure a personal 
breaking of the seal and a private audi- 
ence with the addressee. Notoriously 
the most casual and trivial communica- 
tions come bedecked with the majority 
of these insignia of secrecy and privacy. 
Like David's victims, these are num- 
bered by the tens of thousands. 

The fear of the submarine may be 
ended, says one correspondent, by do- 
mesticating great flocks of sea gulls by 
feeding them on food fashioned to rep- 
resent periscopes, and, when they had 
become accustomed to this method of 
feeding, by turning them loose to gorge 
themselves on real periscopes. In the 
same mail a western lady put forth her 
plan for assisting the finances of the 
Red Cross. She would have govern- 



118 Secretary Baker at the Front 

ment officials donate shirt-tails which 
might be made into aprons, and which 
might have written on each of them in 
unfading ink the functions of state at 
which that shirt-tail had been worn in 
its palmier and more unified days. A 
clear headed tactician rose up to ask 
why no one had thought of ordering an 
Allied retreat, having carefully packed 
in advance the vacated trenches with 
propagandist pamphlets and other ma- 
terial designed to lure on the enemy to 
a hollow victory, little knowing that he 
was falling into a trap that would per- 
suade him of the error of his ways and 
induce him to man the newly occupied 
trenches in the interest of the Allies. 
Another strategist in that same day's 
grist recited an original plan for driv- 
ing back the Boche. He would set up 
a smoke screen behind the Allied lines 
and he would confound the enemy by 



Secretary Baker at the Front 119 

throwing motion pictures upon that 
screen, showing countless thousands of 
troops marching out of the heavens, as 
it were, against the foe. He added that 
it would be necessary to accompany the 
picture show by a discordant jangle 
produced by the rattling of "jugs, tin 
pans and bottles," so that in the result- 
ant confusion the enemy would rush for 
the Rhine, sorely confused and affright- 
ened by the desertion of their heavenly 
ally. 

Every mail brings its quota of them. 
In the offices of the adjutant-general of 
the army, upwards of 200,000 pieces of 
postal matter have been received and 
considered in a day. A large propor- 
tion of it comes addressed to the secre- 
tary of war — who might be considerably 
hurried were he himself to take the mass 
of it to an inner chamber for a personal 
perusal. 



120 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Dickens pays a tribute of compas- 
sion to the secretary who "daily strug- 
gles breast-high" in what he terms the 
Dismal Swamp. But it isn't fair to 
leave the story there. For far more 
numerous than those who make the dis- 
mal swamp are those who dwell in the 
high places. These latter set the 
standard. The others provide the ec- 
centric exceptions about which we may 
laugh or write. 

The Mt, Vernon had made the fast- 
est "turnaround" in a French port of 
any American transport since the be- 
ginning of the war. And the first half 
of its westward voyage gave promise of 
breaking another war record in the 
speed of its trans- Atlantic trip. Not 
since the memorable days of August, 
1914, had the boilers of the ship been 
so pushed. It was the Kronprinzessin 
(now the Mt, Vernon) which left New 



Secretary Baker at the Front 121 

York on the 28th of July preceding the 
outbreak of war and was on the ocean 
when the Imperial government warned 
its merchantmen on August 1 to remain 
in neutral ports. Her cargo included 
ten millions of dollars' worth of gold 
bullion and British naval vessels scoured 
the sea in search of her as a prize of war 
following the declaration of August 4. 
But after nearly reaching the British 
Isles the skipper of the Kronprinzessin 
turned her prow about, darkened her 
lights, covered her portholes and pushed 
the 20,000-ton craft through the water 
at twenty-three knots, finding safety on 
August 5 in the port of Bar Harbor, 
Maine. 

Our hopes for corresponding speed 
on this later trip were shattered when 
on the fifth night out the wireless 
brought word that the good ship City 
of Wilmington was burning furiously 



122 Secretary Baker at the Front 

at sea in the direction of Sable Island 
and was in need of assistance. The last 
message stated that the fire had driven 
the crew to the small boats and to the 
sea. At once the course of our ship 
was changed and preparations were 
made to locate and take aboard and 
care for the survivors. But late in the 
night another wireless came, this one 
from a Danish passenger ship, saying 
that it was much closer than we were to 
the stricken ship and could attend to 
the work of rescue. I hope that Secre- 
tary Daniels never sees fit to cross- 
question me about the latter stages of 
that abortive rescue trip, for skillful ex- 
amination could worm from me the 
names of two strong men who, galled 
by long droughts in the wine mess, made 
signs and said pass-words to the ship's 
surgeon when it was determined to re- 
turn to our former course and to forego 



Secretary Baker at the Front 123 

the expedition of rescue. They men- 
tioned a river of certain color which I 
almost instantly recognized as a com- 
mercial brand of whisky. And was any 
of it taken out from bondage for the 
prospective treatment of the rescued, 
they solicitously inquired of the doctor ; 
and would it really be necessary to pour 
the good stuff back into the bottle or 
jug or keg or hogshead, or whatever he 
had taken it out of, they further queried. 
Many a precious drop had been lost 
in such a barren undertaking, they 
warned; and the night was cold and 
damp and dark, they further added, and 
they had worked long and late, and 
did n't he know just how it was? Evi- 
dently he did n't. The unhealing phy- 
sician retained a stern and rockbound 
countenance; and the incident ended 
sadly and with slow music. 

So the transport returned to its for- 



124 Secretary Baker at the Front 

mer course; but a long-continued fog 
added to the delay caused by the be- 
ginning of the rescue journey, and de- 
stroyed the prospect of a record-break- 
ing crossing. Nevertheless the trip did 
not lack for incidents that tend to linger 
in memory. For instance, reverting 
again to the book of truth: 

April 10. Wednesday. For first time since 
boarding ship, early Monday, I had my clothes 
off today. My views on the institution of bath- 
ing have undergone a gradual but complete revo- 
lution — in childhood I thought it an atrocity, 
later it was a habit; this trip has made it a 
festival. 

April 11. Thursday. General Black in- 
jured his back during a strenuous automobile 
journey two days before leaving France and has 
been in bed much of the trip so far. A huge 
and funereal wire stretcher has been placed be- 
side his bed that his exit may be hastened if it 
should become necessary to abandon the ship. 
I should think it would wrinkle a man's morale — 
lying that way in the plain, grim view of a 
stretcher, but the General does n't seem to mind 
it. He inquired whimsically today if it would 



Secretary Baker at the Front 125 

seem ungrateful if he did n't use the thing after 
putting his orderly to the trouble of getting it. 
I did n't think the orderly would mind it. 

April 12. Friday. General Black has re- 
covered. The only remaining symptom of his 
indisposition is a thorough-going aversion to a 
particular phonograph record, played betvreen 
each tvro courses at meal-time and consisting 
largely of semi-alliterative and mealy-mouthed 
references to Honolulu Lou. 

April 13. Saturday. Lou's praises will be 
sung no longer in the dining room. The third 
consecutive outburst of this record in the course 
of as many meals proved to be its swan song; it 
has disappeared. General Black is not impli- 
cated in the disappearance — he says so, and the 
General, no less than Brutus, is an honorable 
man. 

A sentiment arises in favor of a new leader 
for the phonograph. "America" was played to- 
day in the middle of a rapidly cooling soup 
course. 

Every night we have a picture show aboard. 
The attendance is about 100% of those with 
seaworthy legs and stomachs, because the rest of 
the ship is dark, in addition to the pictures being 
first class. On the eastbound trip there is room 
for only the army men to see the films, and the 
same scenes are shown on the westward trip to 



126 Secretary Baker at the Front 

the navy men. The secretary of war has be- 
come most vulgarly enamored of the j ovial Fatty 
Arbuckle. 

April 14. Sunday. The secretary preached 
at the service held on board this morning and 
Col. Brett, who claims to have heard other ser- 
mons, says this was a good one. He talked of 
the spirit underlying the westward voyages 
across this ocean — the trip of Columbus, the 
trip of the Mayflower and the trips of the 
Transports. 

This afternoon. Lieutenant Leyders, the lova- 
ble Danish navigating officer of the ship, took 
the secretary and me to his stateroom, where are 
kept the remnants of a little French-English 
library of the Kronprinzessin. As a memento 
of the homeward trip, he gave us each a volume 
from out the collection of the Norddeutscher 
Lloyd liner. What I drew describes in great 
and delectable detail a journey "De San Fran- 
cisco au Canada." But my custody constitutes 
only nine points of the law and I fully expect 
some square headed individual with an up- 
twirled mustache to arise at the peace conference 
and announce in Teutonic accents that there can 
be no peace till that book is back with its right- 
ful owners. I sha'n't like to return it; and I 
think perhaps he may prefer to have in exchange 



Secretary Baker at the Front 127 

a stiff bound copy of Niccolo Machiavelli's, 
*'The Prince." 

April 15. Monday. At S o'clock this morn- 
ing in my stateroom I lit my blued flashlight to 
see what time it was. In its faint gleam I could 
scarcely see the dial of my watch. But someone 
on the deck outside saw the light and instantly 
set up a vigorous pounding in the place my win- 
dow would occupy were the porthole not closed. 
I wonder if that fellow had been spending his 
nights out there since we left Europe, waiting 
for me to kindle a kindly light. 

For a long while tonight we paced the quarter 
deck, the secretary and I. Living in one cabin 
with him I have learned to know him anew. I 
knew him at home, as a simple man who often 
drove his own automobile, who wore no jewelry, 
who used no perfumes, who had his own work- 
shop in the basement and his own garden in the 
back yard, whose chief preoccupations were a 
trio of lovable children and a score of much-used 
pipes. But tonight we talked of many things. 

I mentioned postbellum reconstruction. 
"Some day this ship will be bringing back those 
boys," he said, "and one of our jobs at home is 
to see that the fruits of victory are made sweet 
for the fellows who have won them." 

We spoke of censorship. "Personally," he 



128 Secretary Baker at the Front 

said, **I 'm convinced that nobody need fear to 
trust the English-speaking race with an idea; it 
won't explode with them." 

I wondered if I ought to belong to the federal 
employees' union. "Be mightily sure you 're 
working for the hig union," he advised, "and it 
won't make so much difference about the other 
ones." 

He is a bit more sanguine than I about the 
reward of integrity. "If nobody had ever 
known honesty," he thinks, "it would have been 
worth some fellow's time to invent it, for it 
pays; I have never yet made an honest decision 
which has n't at some time come back to shake 
hands with me." 

What method of working did he advise, I 
presently inquired. "When any job of big pro- 
portions is afoot," he suggested, "there will be 
a myriad of temptations to wander from the 
main trail, to chase alluring but inconsequential 
butterflies. Your time for reading and reflec- 
tion will tend to become cluttered by the con- 
sideration of noisily proclaimed minutiae, whose 
cycle of life is a loud-lived day. Your time for 
activity will be harassed by many a picayunish 
proposal that will be to the proponent of it one 
of the final verities. When a man has wheels 
in his head, he usually shows it by the spokes 
coming out of his mouth," he laughed. "There 



Secretary Baker at the Front 129 

will be less trouble in finding men for the de- 
tails than in getting those who will see things 
whole and unobscured by non-essentials. Have 
you ever taken up the first page of the morning 
paper and marked out the things that really 
don't mater?" 

I sought to urge him to continue in Washing- 
ton the periods of exercise which an abundance 
of time permitted him to have on shipboard. 
**I 'm afraid it can't be done/' he answered; 
"I Ve been a stationary engine too long to be- 
come a locomotive now." 

I complained over our inability to make him 
prepare his addresses, to give advance copy to 
the press, and to utilize the universally employed 
mechanics of proper publicity. "I guess I 
was n't meant for a vender of patent medicines," 
was his reply. 

I asked him to become pedagogical and to 
tell me what habit had been of greatest value to 
him. "I think the cultivation of the *fence- 
corners' of time," he answered, "has done more 
for me than any other consciously formed cus- 
tom. There are untold possibilities in the min- 
utes we casually waste." College mates of his 
have told me of a tent-like arrangement of mos- 
quito-netting which he had suspended from the 
center light in his room and under which, pro- 
tected from the insects attracted by the light, 



130 Secretary Baker at the Front 

he stole an extra hour of study from each night. 
People of Cleveland who knew him there in the 
days before he owned an automobile say that 
he habitually carried pocket editions of standard 
literary works, with which to keep occupied 
while on trolley cars. 

It seems easier to work or fight with and 
imder men who are as essentially democratic 
when they are alone and when they are bosses 
as when they are accepting a nomination or 
orating on the Fourth of July. 

April 1 6. Tuesday. We met today a rather 
dilapidated little craft whose name and nation- 
ality were not readily recognizable. Evidently 
neither were ours to it. Mounted on its stern 
was one 3 inch gun. I sha'n't wreck any naval 
secrets by recording the number of our guns, but 
they were bigger than S's and more numerous 
than one. But each of the ships, not recogniz- 
ing the other, solemnly and respectively trained 
its armament on the other and kept it so trained 
as they passed. Later we learned it was a 
Hawaiian fruit carrier. It is proper to hope, 
therefore, that its confidence in that 3 inch gun 
may not be misplaced. 

Early morning of April 16th brought 
the first sight of land and precisely 
seven weeks after its beginning the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 131 

journey ended at an Atlantic port. 
Again it was New York; but don't tell 
the censor I Ve written the name. He 
must never know. 

Seven weeks with the soul of Amer- 
ica! Seven weeks at the cutting edge 
of a great machine builded by the young 
giant among the republics! Seven 
weeks at the outposts of democracy! 
There is a spiritual exhilaration in 
watching the missionaries of a country 
and of a world. To watch them on 
those frontiers where glory dwells, 
brings back our school-day stories of 
history. Not in all time has there been 
moved over seas an army equal in size 
to that which America has placed across 
the Atlantic. Even those who consti- 
tute the elements of those far-flung 
forces, each busy at his own localized 
specialty, do not realize the magnitude 
and the multitude of the enterprises be- 



132 Secretary Baker at the Front 

ing carried on along a line of communi- 
cation hundreds of miles long. 

Add the value of all the iron and all 
the steel products produced in the 
United States in the last pre-war year; 
add the value of all the lumber and all 
the timber products ; all the cotton goods 
and all the year's automobiles — add 
them all, and you have a total less by 
millions than a year's appropriation for 
the quartermaster-general of the army. 
Double the amount you have calculated, 
and you will have added less to the sum 
than the chief of ordnance adds to the 
yearly bill of the War Department. 
The largest single communication office 
in the world is that of the adjutant- 
general of the United States Army. 
The biggest building in the world is 
an army storehouse. In the summer of 
1917, at points scattered throughout the 
country, sufficient cantonments were 



Secretary Baker at the Front 133 

built to house the combined populations 
of Arizona, Nevada, Delaware, and 
Alaska. The doing of that job necessi- 
tated lumber sufficient to build a side- 
walk four times around the world and 
consumed in twelve weeks the amount 
of physical energy which went into the 
building of the Panama Canal. In 
France the storage areas now built or 
building, if placed end to end, would 
constitute a building fifty feet in width 
and stretching in length from Wash- 
ington to New York. Behind the far- 
flung battle lines of the Americans in 
France are six hundred miles of rail- 
road to the French coast. Beyond the 
coast is three thousand miles of ocean, 
infested by sub-sea ships and by the con- 
stant threat of a hostile navy. And 
extending from the American ports of 
embarkation is another journey of 1,200 
miles, the average haul of troops in the 



134 Secretary Baker at the Front 

United States before reaching the sea- 
board. 

It was natural, therefore, that the sec- 
retary of war should say to the en- 
gineers of the American Expeditionary 
Force : 

*'I find that written reports have given me an 
inadequate idea of the difficulties which the 
enemy said we could not overcome and which 
we are overcoming. After her long and stout- 
hearted defense, France could spare us little ma- 
terial or labor for our purposes except by ill- 
advised diversions from her own organization. 
She could only offer us land on which to raise 
our structures and the right of way for our 
communications. ... I only wish that every 
American could see this work as I saw it. I 
ceased to be an official while I thrilled as a citi- 
zen with pride and satisfaction over the ever- 
increasing force which we shall bring to the aid 
of the allied armies in France." 

No statement I have seen attempts 
comprehensively to describe the works 
of the Americans in France. None 
could well be written. The English 



Secretary Baker at the Front 135 
Burke once said he knew no way of 
indicting a nation. It is scarcely more 
easy to describe a nation's business 
which ramifies without end and which 
recognizes no boundary but the double 
line of battle. 

More than that, any description 
which might carry the picture of to- 
day's operations would be antiquated 
to-morrow. The officers, accompany- 
ing the secretary of war to projects 
which they had seen two months pre- 
viously, rubbed their eyes in amazement 
at the transformation. Ten weeks 
after the secretary's tour of the rear 
areas, the London "Times," in a de- 
tailed report, concluded: 

The Americans in France are rapidly push- 
ing to completion the longest and in many re- 
spects the greatest scheme of communications 
ever used in warfare. A trip over these lines 
today is a deeply impressive experience. Since 
Mr. Newton D. Baker, the United States Sec- 



136 Secretary Baker at the Front 

retary of War, inspected them less than three 
months ago, enormous progress has been made. 
Today the work is fairly leaping forward; the 
very landscape changes overnight. 

I have seen no account which packs 
more of a picture into a few printed 
pages than does that story in "The 
Times." Its conclusions are these: 

After two solid weeks of travel, inspecting 
every main phase and much of the detail of this 
vast project, I return convinced that what the 
Americans have accomplished since their first 
detachment of troops landed in France will 
stand out in history as one of the greatest 
achievements of the war. . . . 

The French had all their sources of supply 
near at hand, and the establishment of their 
lines of communication was a comparatively 
simple affair. The British, with all their 
sources much farther away from the fighting 
areas, and with water transport entering as an 
important factor into their scheme, had a much 
more difficult task in planning and perfecting 
their supply service. 

But great as was the British problem, that 
which confronted the Americans when they en- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 137 

tered the war was immeasurably greater. 
Their armies and all their war materials had 
to be brought thousands of miles from their 
sources of supply; the submarine campaign was 
at its highest point of efficiency ; the adoption of 
the convoy system considerably reduced the 
capacity of shipping facilites^ which, even in the 
most favorable circumstances, would have been 
totally inadequate to the demands made upon 
them; there were no large modern ports on the 
coast of France; nor was there anything like 
sufficient railway facilities to accommodate the 
vast stream of men and materials which must 
flow steadily in, with constantly increasing vol- 
ume, from the date when the first detachment 
of United States soldiers landed on French 
soil. . . . 

The pressure toward France increased with 
startling rapidity; indeed, it was measured only 
by the utmost limit of available shipping space. 
... To take care of this steadily growing vol- 
ume of men, horses, guns, food, and supplies, to 
resolve the modest existing facilities into a per- 
manent line of communications hundreds of 
miles in length, adequate to care for an army 
of the future numbering millions, at the same 
time meeting all the transport requirements of 
the civil population scattered over the great 
stretch of France through which these lines ex- 



138 Secretary Baker at the Front 

tended — that was the task which confronted 
the first detachment of American engineers. . . . 

What the American forces in France have ac- 
complished thus far is almost incredible. For 
instance, out of the waste lands adjacent to an 
old French port they have constructed a splen- 
did line of modern docks, where every day now 
ships are pouring forth their cargoes of men 
and war materials, cars and machinery. This 
dock system is finished. It supplements the old 
French dock system in the town, where still 
more ships are constantly discharging American 
cargoes. A huge new warehouse system at this 
point is also nearing completion; even now it is 
able to take care of the great flood of supplies 
which is constantly pouring in. 

In the old part of this same coast town the 
Americans have installed motor operation and 
cold-storage plants, a motor reception park, and 
quarters for storing supplies for ordnance and 
aviation forces. These are more or less tempo- 
rary quarters and will be merged in the near 
future in the general scheme which is now being 
completed in the outskirts of the town. 

In addition to the new docks, warehouses and 
extensive railway yards (these latter have a 
trackage of nearly 200 miles), work is well ad- 
vanced on the new car assembly shop, where al- 
ready, when I saw it in its incompleted state. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 139 

twenty-odd freight cars a day, of three differ- 
ent designs, were being turned out and put into 
immediate service. Another assembly plant has 
been constructed — at a different point — to han- 
dle all-steel cars, which are transported here 
from America "knocked down" — that is, in sec- 
tions, in order to economize shipping space. 
At this plant these steel cars are now being 
assembled at the rate of a complete train a day, 
and plans are rapidly culminating for a large 
extension of the work. Here, too, a large camp 
has been built for the negro stevedores, also a 
remount camp, and two big rest camps, each pro- 
viding for many thousands of American soldiers, 
who march thence from the boats, to be sifted 
and rearranged for dispatch to the various train- 
ing camps farther inland. Not far from here, 
work on a new 20,000-bed hospital is forging 
ahead, and thirty days from now it will be vir- 
tually completed. This is the largest hospital 
center yet constructed. It is composed entirely 
of small, one-story, light, airy, and attractive 
structures, divided into small squares, laid out on 
a great open stretch of sand, surrounded by pine 
trees, and altogether promises to be an ideal in- 
stitution of its kind. 

In this same section is an immense new artil' 
lery camp all ready for the several brigades of 
artillery which were expected when I was there. 



140 Secretary Baker at the Front 

and^ like the hospital enterprise, it is in strong 
hands and promises well. It includes a large 
remount camp, in which were several thousand 
horses at the time of my visit. The work in this 
section, which is typical of that at all the other 
base ports I visited, is being vigorously and in- 
telligently directed. Strong executives are in 
charge and the spirit of the workers is excellent 
throughout. Everywhere the Americans are 
realizing that they have "caught up with them- 
selves,'* and now that they can visualize the 
completion of what a few months ago looked so 
much like an impossible undertaking, they are 
buoyed up, happy, and inspired by their suc- 
cess; they have conquered obstacles and over- 
come conditions which only great ability and 
indomitable spirit could possibly surmount. 

One realizes, after inspecting the character 
and extent of the work at the several base ports 
which the Americans have taken over, that here 
lies the strength of their future scheme of opera- 
tions. These port schemes are great affairs to- 
day ; but they are so worked out as to be capable 
of almost unlimited expansion. . . . The war 
developments of the past two months have 
clearly pointed the way toward greater unity of 
effort by the Allies, and greater mobility of ac- 
tion hj the French, British and American fight- 
ing forces. The tendency is toward a pooling 



Secretary Baker at the Front 14!l 

both of effort and supplies, the natural outcome 
of centralization under a single command. . . . 

As at the sea ports, so I found conditions all 
along the hundreds of miles of the American 
lines of communication; everywhere the same 
kind of capable men in command, the same 
splendid spirit and energy, the same steady 
progress toward the ends in view, the same op- 
timism aa to the quick and successful working 
out of the plans as a whole. . . . 

At present the immense "Intermediate Sec- 
tion" looms large in the general American plan. 
... It comprises a wide variety of enterprises, 
all on a huge scale, scattered at various points 
over a large section of country, but skilfully 
linked up by rail, one branch dovetailed into an- 
other, and all combining for the quick handling 
of stores for an army of millions. 

An ''organization chart" showing the activi- 
ties centered under the commanding general of 
this great Intermediate Section, though not quite 
so formidable, perhaps, reminds one of a chart 
of the Whitehall district of London. This com- 
manding officer is responsible primarily for the 
main reserve stores for the American Expedi- 
tionary Forces, and the constant sending for- 
ward of their daily supplies; but in addition to 
that he has a large measure of responsibility for 
the organization and control of great camps, 



142 Secretary Baker at the Front 

schools, base hospitals, rest areas, engineering 
and repair shops, tank assembling plants, loco- 
motive shops, ordnance dumps and ordnance re- 
pair shops, the principal repository for "spare 
parts" of all machinery used in the Army, cold 
storage plants, oil and petrol depots, forestry 
work, and control of a good-sized labor army, 
which includes many thousands of negroes. Chi- 
namen, and German prisoners of war. 

A round of this huge field of operations is 
both instructive and inspiring. At one point I 
went through an enormous locomotive assem- 
bling and repair works (housed in a great mod- 
em factory building now nearing completion) 
built for the Americans, under French super- 
vision, by a Spanish firm; a huge oil and petrol 
supply station, a 10,000-bed hospital, and a num- 
ber of other highly important branches of a cen- 
tral organization which constitutes one of the 
real backbone sections of the service of supply. 
At another point I went over great railroad 
yards to see the rows upon rows of steel struc- 
ture warehouses which are being built to hold 
supplies for an army of a million men for thirty 
days, an immense refrigerating plant, a gas 
plant, an oil storage plant, and countless other 
features, all on the same prodigious scale. 

Calm, quiet men are supervising it all, watch- 
ing it grow before their eyes. When the tele- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 143 

phones jingle (and they are never long in re- 
pose), there is no shouting, no excitement; just 
quiet, firm replies to the questions put. There is 
everywhere an air of suppressed energy rather 
than exuberance or "bustle." It is orderly 
progress, firmly guided by strong minds, by 
capable men. America has put her best execu- 
tives into this work, and they are rapidly "mak- 
ing good," as events of the very near future are 
certain to prove. 

Farther along the line I saw much the same 
evidence of orderliness combined with strength 
in the army bakeries, in the big central camou- 
flage plant, at the various advanced centers from 
which the army supplies are rearranged for 
shifting to various railroads and thence to the 
soldiers at the front. It all spells a complete 
knowledge, on the part of every principal en- 
gaged, of what America set out to do when she 
entered this war, and a full determination to see 
that job through to the finish. This foundation 
work is sound and thorough. So, also, will be 
the work of the Americans when they emerge in 
strength into the larger field of operations. . . . 

From every point of view the results of the 
first year's work may be set down as a glorious 
achievement, of which Americans have every 
right to be proud; the year's record is a monu- 
ment to their zeal and their wonderful ability. 



144 Secretary Baker at the Front 

It is a record which promises still greater things 
for the near future. It spells the beginning of 
the end, and points clearly to an overwhelming 
victory for the Allies. 

It is difficult to generalize concern- 
ing the American Army. There is too 
much of it, and there are too many- 
chances for exceptions to any rule. 
Generalities, therefore, are expressions 
of approximations and tendencies. 

Thus delimited, it is safe to say that 
ours is a sober army. Drunkenness has 
not disappeared ; that would be miracu- 
lous. But one may live among our 
troops three weeks and see scarcely an 
intoxicated man. I was not willing to 
trust my judgment on this point. I 
might not have looked in the right 
places. But neither had the secretary 
seen any drunken man. General Per- 
shing stated the problem was well un- 
der control. A newspaper man during 




GENERAL PERSHING TALKING TO MISS PAT MOORE 

Miss Moore is matron at U. S. Base Hospital No. 8, Colonel Boyd, aide, in center; March 

14, 1918 



Secretary Baker at the Front 145 

four weeks among the troops had found 
two of them intoxicated. The army is 
sober. 

It is cheerful, too. Many there are 
who are not satisfied, but few who are 
not contented. It is a well clothed, well 
fed, well paid army that has gone to 
Europe. Indeed the French have 
feared at times that the liberality in 
payment of American troops and their 
freedom with their money might not 
have a fortunate after-effect upon the 
frugal natives. The aggregate in- 
crease in weight of the army men who 
were in the Mexican expedition or on 
the border was just less than a million 
pounds. It is not possible yet to apply 
the comparison to the army in France, 
but there is literal truth in the words of 
the president: "I do not believe it an 
exaggeration to say that no army ever 
before assembled has had more consci- 



146 Secretary Baker at the Front 

entious and painstaking thought given 
to the protection and stimulation of its 
mental, moral and physical manhood." 
They are a brave lot, too, that army. 
The country Over There teems with 
tales of their valor, and the letters cap- 
tured on prisoners bring abundant evi- 
dence from the other side of the line. 
In all our journey we met not a soldier 
who was n't anxious to get closer to the 
front, whose face was n't turned toward 
the East. Some time ago the secretary 
of war stated that he had seen strong 
and grizzled men of the army turn away 
from his desk to hide tears when they 
were asked to stay in this country and 
do organization work instead of going 
to France, where the glory of their pro- 
fession lay. On the ocean, in the midst 
of the submarine area, seamen came to 
him to plead for transfers to the army, 
that they might see, as they said, active 



Secretary Baker at the Front 147 

service at the front. The area behind 
the battle-line in France formerly was 
named the Service of the Rear; but the 
high-spirited men of the American 
forces so objected to the shell-proof 
connotation of "Rear" that the name of 
that area had to be changed to Service 
of Supply. 

At American headquarters one after- 
noon in the early days of the present 
drive, a long distance telephone message 
went out to an engineer detachment, 
telling it to move to the aid of the Brit- 
ish in the North ; and before the receiver 
could be hung up we heard over the wire 
the wild, frenzied cheering that greeted 
the announcement that made those en- 
gineers part of the vanguard instead of 
the rearguard. Even at the actual 
front one does not find the satisfaction 
of inertia; for so aggressive has been 
the patrol by the Americans of the area 



148 Secretary Baker at the Front 

in front of their wire that more than 
once we found that territory had lost its 
classic name of No-Man's-Land and 
now was simply Yankeeland. 

To those who love America greatly, 
but who love the world quite as much, 
there is no cause for sorrow in the les- 
sening of what was once a "splendid 
isolation" and our coming each day into 
a closer-knit relationship with the free 
peoples of the earth. 

There was a time, I suppose, when 
the main interests in a score of isolated 
settlements along the Atlantic coast 
were local and community concerns. 
At that time a person probably de- 
scribed himself as from Plymouth or 
Williamstown. 

Later, during and after the Revolu- 
tion and in the days of the Confedera- 
tion, the Colonies as entities were dom- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 149 

inant. Then a man was a Virginian or 
a Carolinian. 

In the middle of the last century the 
principal cleavage in the sympathies 
and adherences of citizens was between 
groups of states. The primary descrip- 
tion of a person at that time was as a 
Northerner or a Southerner. 

But now in this day one may stand 
on a far continent where men of this 
nation are streaming in by hundreds of 
thousands and he may hear them hailed, 
not as settlers of Plymouth, not as citi- 
zens of Virginia, not as adherents of the 
North, but simply as Americans — come 
back to the Old World to vindicate the 
ideals of the New. 

More than that, I still hear the secre- 
tary of war saying: "Now and then 
somebody tells me he has heard some- 
body say that America is fighting some- 
body else's war — that we are fighting 



150 Secretary Baker at the Front 

for England or France ; and my instant 
reflection is, 'suppose that were true.' 
It is not; but suppose it were. I am 
not very sure that I would not be per- 
fectly willing to fight for them and them 
only. To whom do we build monu- 
ments, for whom do we cast heroes' 
medals — for those who save their own 
lives or for those who save the lives of 
others ? What is the quality of heroism 
if it be not unselfish self-sacrifice? I 
am not even ambitious that the glory of 
the final conquest should come to us 
alone. I should far rather have the tri- 
umph of democracy the reward of the 
associated effort of democratic peoples 
everywhere, so that neither we nor they 
might have any monopoly of that virtue 
but might be partners in its glory and 
associates in the further progress to be 
made." 

I like to think, however fancifully, of 



Secretary Baker at the Front 151 

the incidents in these pages as expres- 
sive of a people who once were colonists, 
and then were sectionalists and later 
were nationalists and who now, in this 
springtime of the world, are become hu- 
manists. 

Driving through Picardy on an after- 
noon in the opening stage of the March 
offensive, the automobiles of the secre- 
tary of war were stopped at a country 
railroad crossing while a freight-train 
passed. Stopped also, and for the 
same reason, was a motor-ambulance 
driven by two young women, who 
seemed to be Americans. The secre- 
tary of war approached the ambulance, 
introducing himself to the drivers, say- 
ing he assumed they were American 
girls. 

**We don't happen to be from the 
States," one of them replied; and the 
way she smiled as she cranked her ma- 



152 Secretary Baker at the Front 

chine made us unmarried young men 
in the party very attentive. "We 're 
Enghsh girls," she said; and then she 
added, "I guess, though, it comes to 
about the same thing now." 

So, too, the French and ourselves 
come closer "to about the same thing 
now." In the city of Paris is a mili- 
tary and scientific college, L'Ecole 
Polytechnique, ancient and renowned 
among the French, and numbering as 
its graduates many of the foremost citi- 
zens of the republic. 

Among the students at the Ecole 
Polytechnique in 1830, was one J. Bos- 
quet, afterwards made a marshal of 
France by the third Napoleon. In the 
family papers of Marshal Bosquet has 
been found a letter written December 
15th, 1830, to his mother while he was a 
student at the Polytechnique. In it 
was this passage: 



Secretary Baker at the Front 153 

Last Monday General Lafayette came to the 
school with his two aides-de-camp. We received 
him in the lecture room of the Department of 
Chemistry. There^ having laid aside his cane, 
which he can no longer do without, and having 
greeted us with his habitual cordiality, he said: 

"As an old friend and as one of your com- 
rades in the Great Week,^ I wish I could have 
been with you for the exercises at the opening of 
the term, but my infirmities have kept me away 
until today. Now, however, I come to you as an 
ambassador — an ambassador from a far off land. 
You know that across the seas, on a shore where, 
as here. Liberty flies her flag, there exists an- 
other Poly technique, a school founded on the 
model of our own. Its students have heard, and 
not without a family-feeling, of your happy ef- 
forts in behalf of the independence of our coun- 
try, and they have been good enough to ask me to 
present to you their fraternal congratulations." 

After this S23eech, he read us, in English and 
in French, the original and the translation, of a 
letter which the American cadets had addressed 
to the "Twenty-Ninth of July" students. We 
are going to answer it, and later I will send you 
our reply, and also a copy of the letter from the 
United States. 

1 The week of July, 1830, when Charles X was de- 
posed by the "Revolution of July." 



154 Secretary Baker at the Front 

The "Moniteur," the official govern- 
ment paper of the period, in its issue 
of January 8th, 1831, published the text 
of the greetings sent by the Americans 
through Lafayette, and the reply it 
evoked from the young Frenchmen. 

The lapse of time has seemed only to 
increase the warmth of the words con- 
veyed eighty-eight years ago by the 
French nobleman, scholar, warrior, 
from the boy-soldiers on the Hudson : 

West Point, 1st October, 1830. 
To the Twenty-Ninth of July Students of 
L'Ecole Poly technique : 
We have been directed by our Corps to offer 
you our hearty congratulations upon your recent 
happy efforts for the independence of France. 
We have long looked upon you as associated in 
our scientific studies; we have always felt for 
you the sympathy which the similarity of our 
work and of our institutions inspires, and it has 
been a great happiness for us to read the sue-' 
cessive accounts of the courage and patriotism 
which you have displayed during the fighting in 
Paris. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 155 

Although citizens of different countries^ the 
same spirit animates us both, and it is with 
pleasure that we call you our brothers-in-arms 
and our co-partners in the defense of that sacred 
Liberty which guarantees to the human race the 
exercise of its rights, and assures the mainte- 
nance of constitutional order. 

As individuals and as a Corps, we beg you to 
accept the assurance of our high esteem. 

RoswELL Park S. O. Ridgley 

Henry Clay, Jr. James Ablen 

Llewellyn Jones 

Written more for this day than for 
that, was the reply of the youthful re- 
publicans of France "To the Cadets of 
the United States Military Academy." 
Young Bosquet himself was one of the 
co-authors of the answer, which read: 

In the name of all our comrades we beg leave 
to reply to your congratulations. In our efforts 
to reestablish the sacred rights of mankind we 
knew that generous hearts on the other side of 
the world would beat in unison with ours. The 
friends of Liberty belong to one great family. 
Above all, those whose work and aspirations 
should have for their object to secure from so- 



156 Secretary Baker at the Front 

ciety the recognition of the true needs and rights 
of all^ must reach out friendly hands across their 
countries' boundaries and join them in the same 
common cause. 

More fortunate than we^ you are not called 
upon to fight a tyrant, for your fathers have se- 
cured for you that full and complete liberty for 
which our hearts have ever longed. 

We are happy to have given occasion for 
strengthening the bonds of friendship which nat- 
urally unite us; and we beg you to believe that 
here across the seas there will always be hearts, 
young like yours, which beat with joy at every 
new success which comes to you. 

Please accept. Gentlemen, the assurance of 
our esteem and of our cordial affection. 

For the students of L'Ecole Poly technique: 
J. RoGuiN A. Tabuteau 

J. Bosquet Fabre 

SOLIGNAC 

Three quarters of a century passed. 
In 1914, there was unveiled in front of 
the main sally port of the Ecole a strik- 
ing statue, symbolic of the spirit which 
long ago had carried these children of 
Paris out of their schoolrooms to the de- 



Secretary Baker at the Front 157 

fense of the city, and which won for 
them from an enemy officer the appella- 
tion of "a furious battahon of Poly tech- 
nicians." It is the bronze figure of a 
lad, full of vigor and beauty, rushing to 
the charge with sword uplifted and 
shouting — ^what else could he be shout- 
ing ? — ^Vive la France ! The uniform he 
wears is that of the School in 1814, 
which curiously resembles the full dress 
uniform of the West Point cadets. 

Now again the men of those schools 
are students in arms. So it came to 
pass that on the anniversary of Amer- 
ica's declaration of war, there gathered 
in the American Embassy to meet the 
secretary of war, a notable company of 
the illustrious graduates of the French 
School — Les Amis de TEcole Poly- 
technique — headed by Monsieur Jules 
Cambon, late ambassador to Germany, 
Senator Cuvinot and General Floren- 



158 Secretary Baker at the Front 

tin, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of 
Honor. They had come with a fur- 
ther reply to the message of Lafayette. 
The distinguished gentlemen compris- 
ing the Society of the Friends of the 
Polytechnique had met and had re- 
solved to present to the Military Acad- 
emy a life-size copy of the inspiring 
statue which stands in the courtyard of 
the School. It is to be cast from the 
bronze of cannons captured at the 
Marne, and mounted upon stones taken 
from the field of Verdun. At about the 
same time, but quite independently, the 
students of the Polytechnique had met 
and subscribed from their own funds 
the money necessary to have the same 
statue reproduced in miniature to be 
given to their comrades at West Point. 
In a moving address during the meet- 
ing at the embassy, Lieutenant-Colonel 
Bourguignon described the sentiments 



Secretary Baker at the Front 159 

of the French boys which went with the 
token of their esteem. It was not oc- 
casioned solely by the entrance of the 
United States into war, he said; but it 
was the perpetuation of a tradition 
which has asserted itself each time that 
free institutions have been threatened. 
The secretary himself bore back the 
statuette to the United States, and to 
West Point. The miniature stands 
now in the library of the Academy 
where, upon its receipt, the cadets of 
the school chose a coramittee of their 
fellows to dispatch these words of grati- 
tude and devotion to the givers of the 
gift: 

Eighty-eight years ago our forefathers, in 
pledging themselves friends and comrades, es- 
tablished a bond which time has only strength- 
ened. It is with profound joy that we of West 
Point today send our comrades to confirm this 
pledge. Fighting side by side, with the sons of 
L'Ecole Poly technique, confident and assured 



160 Secretary Baker at the Front 

under the leadership of one of the greatest of 
your graduates, we shall become truly your 
brothers in arms and your associates in defense 
of those ideals to which our united efforts are 
dedicated. The beautiful symbol of the spirit 
of L'Ecole Poly technique which we have re- 
ceived through our Secretary of War, will ever 
serve as a source of inspiration, as a constant 
reminder of the high ideals and the perfect spirit 
which are the foundations of our institutions. 
It will stand as a permanent monument to the 
enduring fraternity of L'Ecole Polytechnique 
and the United States Military Academy, of the 
French Army and the American Army, of France 
and America. We men of the Corps salute you. 

The full size statue, when it reaches 
the Point, probably will be placed in the 
area of barracks. There, more than 
any place else, it will be in a sense at 
the domestic firesides of the cadets, and 
will form a part of their daily experi- 
ences, the mute but eloquent symbol of 
a centuiy-old attachment between the 
students of the two schools, a sentiment 
first consecrated by the separate enter- 





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Secretary Baker at the Front 161 

prises of the respective corps on behalf 
of their own nations, and now rededi- 
cated by their common struggles in a 
mutual enterprise. 

Amid all the sadness and darkness 
that the great tragedy has visited upon 
the world there is a quality of sweet- 
ness and light in the relations between 
the men of America and the people on 
whose soil they gather for battle. A 
railway train stops five minutes at a 
village station, and before it leaves, the 
soldiers and the townsfolk are gathered 
in a half dozen groups on the depot plat- 
form. The old people in a billeting 
area gather about their doorsteps with 
the troops from across the Atlantic and 
strive in the evenings to pass the bar- 
rier of language. The children of 
France cry out after these new guests, 
"Nos Amis" and, Yankee-fashion, the 
expression is contracted into "Sam- 



162 Secretary Baker at the Front 

mies." The love of little people is pro- 
verbial with the fighting men of the 
western republic. At the end of a hard 
afternoon in early April, I was riding 
back to American headquarters with 
General Pershing when suddenly he 
called to the driver to stop the car and 
quickly drew down one of the limou- 
sine's side windows. He had spied a 
wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked tot playing on 
the curbstone where a crowd had gath- 
ered even while the conmiander of the 
Americans was passing through the vil- 
lage. The youngster was too busily en- 
gaged to note the beckonings of the call 
of "Le petit enfant," but other hands 
led him to the big brown car where he 
capitulated to the advances of the man 
inside and his awe gave way to dehght. 
'T can't go by all of 'em," the gen- 
eral said as his car started on, and his 
thoughts, I think, were back with a 



Secretary Baker at the Front 163 
young lad of his own. Somewhere in 
America. 

The ancients practised a. ceremony 
through which those whose blood had 
mingled became brothers. Whether by 
this or other means, that relationship is 
somewhere sanctified each day by the 
men of our armies in France and Italy. 
When returning from his visit to the 
front trenches, the secretary of war 
asked to be driven to a spot in the vi- 
cinity of which are situated the graves of 
some Americans. As he stood beside 
the little mounds of earth, another fun- 
eral procession slowly approached along 
the country road. They were laying to 
rest the body of a private of the Ameri- 
can Army. In the group which fol- 
lowed to the grave the remains of him 
who had been Private Wilkinson, 117th 
Signal Battalion, was the band of his 
organization, the French padre and 



164 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Protestant chaplain arm in arm, two 
choir boys, a throng of soldiers, and> 
heartening to tell, a company of the 
motherly women of France. Around 
the newly -made grave were other simple 
peasant people, and beside the mound 
of fresh earth were two large wreaths 
of flowers fashioned by the loving hands 
of those great-hearted villagers who 
had never seen that soldier in the flesh ; 
but he was of the Americans — nos amis 
— and he had died at the front in 
France. That was enough. 

At the close of the ceremonies a young 
French officer stepped toward the plain 
coffin, and with a few brief words laid 
upon it the greatest gift which France 
may give — the Croix de Guerre. High 
in the heavens there droned as he spoke 
an airplane with the black crossed mark 
of the enemy. Perhaps it, too, saw. 

Many times in private speech and 



Secretary Baker at the Front 165 

public utterance that scene of burial has 
come back to the mind of Secretary 
Baker. Speaking to a group of news- 
paper publishers after his return to 
America he said : 

"I know what that casualty list 
means. I stood on a hillside in France 
where were marked the graves of Amer- 
ican soldiers. I had gone there to pay 
the respect of this nation to that sacred 
investment of America in the soil of 
France. As I stood there I saw an- 
other procession coming up the road 
and I knew that another American sol- 
dier was to be added to those who were 
there. But the little procession which 
brought him was not all Americans. 
God bless those women and children of 
France for their sympathy and under- 
standing! The little cavalcade headed 
by a French village priest walking arm 
in arm with a Protestant army chaplain. 



166 Secretary Baker at the Front 

was followed by French peasant women 
and little children who knew that the 
mother or wife or sister of that soldier 
would want tears shed at his funeral, 
and they had come to shed them as he 
was laid to rest." 

Listening to the secretary of war as 
he spoke, was the poet-lecturer, Ed- 
mund Vance Cooke. The poet soul in 
him saw the scene and reconstructed it 
in his verses, "Mothers of France": 

These women of France he came to save 
Had never known his face or heard his name, 
But when they saw the funeral file, they came, 
Dropping their daily tasks, to take the place 
Of his own womankind. His mother's face 
Shone out from theirs. Almost it seemed that 

she 
Had spirited across the wind-washed sea 
And wept thru these sad eyes of Picardy. 
Great heart of France ! which hath withstood so 

well 
The blast of battles and the hates of hell. 
Which yet hath grace to spare thy prayers and 

flowers 



Secretary Baker at the Front 167 

From thy unnumbered dead to one of ours, 
Our love is thine ! By heart, by hand, by head, 
By whatsoever pledge it may be said ! 
By these — ^thy women mothering our dead! 

Someone presented a copy of the 
poem to Jusserand, Ambassador of the 
French Republic, who sent word to the 
secretary of war: "Next to being a 
poet, there is no greater gift than inspir- 
ing one ; and I compliment you, thank- 
ing you moreover, on behalf of my coun- 
try, which you have caused to be so no- 
bly praised." 

Two months later General Douglas 
MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the 42nd 
Division, sent to the secretary of war 
a beautifully colored sketch with a dam- 
aged church spire in the background and 
an empty ship in the foreground — de- 
signed by the division to mark the graves 
of those of their number who come to 
the end of the Rainbow and who, like 



168 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Private Wilkinson, spread their silent 
tents on fame's eternal camping 
ground. 

So the story of those French peas- 
ants on that secluded hillside has crossed 
the Atlantic and circled America and 
gone back again in prose and verse to 
bind in broader brotherhood two great 
free peoples. 

These things do not constitute the 
fighting of battles ; but they are the stuff 
that wars are made of — and for. 

The struggle against the supremacy 
of uncontrolled military; the strife for 
the sanctity of contract; the crusade 
against the crass philosophy of force; 
the abhorrence of a state deified but 
with mere pretensions to power as the 
supreme attribute of deity; the revolt 
at the laudation of war as a prime agent 
of Kultur, and promoter of progress — 
these are things men die for. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 169 

Such is the quahty of these things of 
the spirit that, out of the welter of things 
material, they will loom larger with the 
going of the years. When the scraps 
of paper that could not save the sanc- 
tity of Belgium have yellowed with 
years; when the bones of the victims of 
ruthlessness have whitened and pow- 
dered; when the pages of the Hymn 
of Hate have seared and withered with 
age; when the hulls of vessels sunk 
traceless have rotted to ooze in the 
ocean — yet in that far day will genera- 
tions of men proclaim the spiritual 
values for which the friends of freedom 
now contend. These are the things 
men live for. 

Two headquarters serve the Ameri- 
can Commander-in-Chief in France. 
General Pershing's military headquar- 
ters are located of course in the rear of 



170 Secretary Baker at the Front 

the principal and more permanent front 
of our troops. The main offices there 
are housed in huge plain stone barracks, 
built about a square area of clay. His 
residence, too, is a large stone structure, 
two blocks away from the headquarters. 
Living with General Pershing are the 
Chief-of-Staff, the Adjutant General, 
two aides and a junior officer as a gen- 
eral assistant. If I were compelled to 
write a brief against French domiciles, 
I think I should take exception to their 
heating facilities and their plumbing ar- 
rangements. If I were constructing a 
brief in defense, I should wax almost 
enthusiastic over their roominess and 
their back yards. 

So far as transportation is concerned, 
France has been likened to a bowl with 
Paris in the middle of it. In getting 
from any one place to another, one tends 
to gravitate toward and through the 



Secretary Baker at the Front 171 

capital. So a second headquarters is 
maintained there. The handsome resi- 
dence of Ogden Mills at 73 Rue Va- 
renne has been placed at the disposal 
of the General. Like many French 
mansions, the house has no frontage 
upon the street. A narrow arcade be- 
tween two buildings facing the Rue 
Varenne leads to a graveled courtyard, 
beyond which is the Parisian home of 
the American commander. On enter- 
ing it, one has a feeling as of going into 
many mansions. In the house are 
forty-odd rooms, all of them with a spa- 
ciousness that bespeaks a free-handed 
architect. A hospitable veranda ex- 
tends along the entire width of the 
house in the rear and overlooks a green 
vista of garden where, thanks to the skill 
of a landscape artist, one may walk long 
without crossing his tracks, in shaded 
paths and rocky grottoes. 



172 Secretary Baker at the Front 

I am beginning to have a somewhat 
domesticated and acclimated feeling in 
the successive headquarters of the field 
commander of the Americans. Early 
in the month of May, following our dec- 
laration of war, the strong- jawed suc- 
cessor of Fighting Fred Funston came 
up from the Mexican border with an 
Indian-like coating of tan, found in the 
Southern Department — and points 
south. With the few members of his 
hastily gathered staff, he ensconced 
himself in one small room directly 
across from mine at the War Depart- 
ment — the initial headquarters of the 
prospective Expeditionary Force. For 
two weeks the little group of officers 
was there behind closed doors, poring 
over maps and lists of equipment and 
compilations of names. Early one 
Sunday morning General Pershing 



% 



Secretary Baker at the Front 173 

came to bid farewell to the secretary 
of war — he was ready to pitch his camp 
on the other side of the ocean. 

On the thirteenth of June, the day 
before his first division sailed from the 
United States, he reached Paris. In 
the Capital, within sight of the old rid- 
ing school adjoining the garden of the 
Tuilleries where the French Republic 
was founded a century and a quarter 
previously, the new headquarters of the 
Americans were set up. These were at 
the Crillon, and it happened that our 
own quarters at that hotel were the same 
as had been occupied by the vanguard 
of the Yanks nearly a year before. 

Later, of course, the headquarters at 
the front became the scene of our main 
activity, but the business to be trans- 
acted and the conferences to be held at 
Paris constantly increased, and caused 



174 Secretary Baker at the Front 
the establishment of a more permanent 
base of operations than could be had as 
transients in a city hotel. 



IV 

AFTEETHOUGHTS 

My son, be admonished: of making many books 
there is no end. 

ECCLESIASTES 12, 12. 

WHATEVER else may be said 
of these pages, know this: 
They were written without fanciful illu- 
sions by their author as to their military 
significance. They purport to be 
neither a weighing of the causes of the 
Great War, nor a treatise on its objects, 
nor an exposition of its operations. 
The publication of them is founded 
on two motives. First, after a few 
years at the present rate of output, the 
man who hasn't written a booklet on 
some phase of It, will have fingers 
pointed at him. Secondly, this seems 

175 



176 Secretary Baker at the Front 

to be the only source from which some- 
thing of a story of the journey of the 
secretary of war may issue. He him- 
self has not the leisure to pen it and the 
two other persons who accompanied him 
would write, if at all, under the re- 
straints imposed by their status as of- 
ficers in the military service. So, 
chosen by process of elimination, I 
proffered myself and accepted the 
nomination. But I blush to think of 
what these chapters owe to Doctor Kep- 
pel and Walter Lippmann and Miss 
Belle Cooney. 

Some day when the master historian 
seeks to fashion the red fabric of these 
times, the facts of this journey may be 
to him a single thread in a long and 
tangled skein. The experience of it has 
brought to me some smattering of the 
feeling which Wordsworth voiced in his 
lines to the celandine: 



Secretary Baker at the Front 177 

Often I have sighed to measure 
By myself a lonely pleasure. 
Sighed to think I read a book 
Only read perhaps by me. 

I have read this book. I had to cor- 
rect the proof of it. And I shall indeed 
sigh (and be joined mayhap by a cer- 
tain publisher in doing so) , if it is "only 
read perhaps by me." But it is not 
without some reservations that I can 
recommend its perusal by others. 
There is a superficiality about it, sug- 
gestive of authorship by one who runs 
more wide than deep. There is at 
times, too, a flippancy which is not diffi- 
cult to overdo. But this latter must be 
charged to the ardor of youthful enthu- 
siasm. Perhaps there is wisdom in that 
snatch of verse which comes back to me 
from an old issue of "Harper's": 

When I have ceased to break my wings 
Against the faultiness of things 
And learned that compromises wait 



178 Secretary Baker at the Front 

Behind each hardly opened gate — 
When I can look life in the eyes, 
Grown calm and very coldly wise, 
Life will have given me the truth 
And taken in exchange — ^my youth. 

Perhaps, therefore, I need not yet re- 
cant. 

In his speech proposing war on April 
2, the President said to the Congress, 
*'It is a fearful thing to lead this great, 
peaceful people into war." None who 
has not seen the process can know the 
extent of its fearfulness. Not before 
in history has a similar task been at- 
tempted, and I have wondered often if 
the doing of it would not crush the per- 
son who was responsible for the War 
Department's portion of it. It is not 
that counsel has been lacking; rather 
the plethora of it has been overwhelm- 
ing. 

Two thousand years ago Lucius 
uEmilius Paulus, chosen by the Romans 



Secretary Baker at the Front 179 

to conduct a war against the Macedo- 
nians, is described by Livy as going out 
from the Senate into the assembly of the 
people and as saying to them : 

In every circle, and truly at every table, there 
are people who lead armies into Macedonia ; who 
know where the camp ought to be placed; what 
posts ought to be occupied by troops; when and 
through what pass Macedonia should be entered ; 
where magazines should be formed; how provi- 
sions should be conveyed by land and sea; and 
when it is proper to engage the enemy, when to 
lie quiet. And they not only determine what is 
best to be done, but if anything is done in any 
other manner than what they have pointed out, 
they arraign the consul, as if he were on his trial. 

Time has not simplified the conduct 
of martial operations. In 1809 Jeffer- 
son's secretary of war, Henry Dear- 
born (described in the Congressional 
Record as "a man of vigorous mind, of 
extensive knowledge of detail, and of 
indefatigable industry"), left office de- 
claring that the business of the depart- 



180 Secretary Baker at the Front 

merit had increased beyond what the 
capacity of any one man could perform. 
The army at that time consisted of 2765 
officers and men. ■ 

Again, in the Civil War, Mr. Lincoln 
said of his secretary of war : 

I cannot add to Mr. Stanton's troubles. His 
position is one of the most difficult in the world. 
The pressure on him is immeasurable and un- 
ending. He is the rock on the beach of our 
national ocean against which the breakers dash 
and roar without ceasing. He fights back the 
angry waters and prevents them from under- 
mining and overwhelming the land. I do not 
see how he survives — why he is not crushed and 
torn to pieces. 

The operations of Mr. Stanton's old 
department proceed today on a scale be- 
side which all comparisons fail. All the 
wars of all the nations from 1793 to 
1914, including the Napoleonic wars, 
the American Civil War, the Franco- 
Prussian War, and the Russo-Japanese 



Secretary Baker at the Front 181 

War, caused the expenditure of less 
treasure than has the Great War since 
1914. Perhaps, therefore, any ray of 
light, however dim, that is shed upon 
the mobilizing mechanism of our nation 
may gain for it a httle more of sympa- 
thetic understanding. 

For more than a year I have been 
privileged to see, sometimes from be- 
hind the scenes, the gathering and 
equipping of a great army. By and 
large, I like to think the job has not 
been an uncreditable one. For a long 
time, too, I have heard outside my win- 
dow the tramp of marching feet. And 
some of them will not march back. 

Within these few months I have tra- 
versed the far-flung lines of battle from 
the midst of every-man's-land to the 
borders of what was no-man's-land; 
from where the home fires burn to where 
the star-shells burst. 



182 Secretary Baker at the Front 

From Over There a man brings back 
this thought : No one can support that 
undertaking moderately. No man can 
be for it somewhat. There is here no 
golden mean, no middle ground of half- 
conviction. For them in France the 
issues are stark naked : they are life and 
death. We support them whole-heart- 
edly or we do not support them at all. 
Generally applied, what can moderate 
backing or partial support mean but 
soldiers half equipped with rifles and 
gas-masks, half defended by barbed- 
wire and earthworks, half fed? Should 
that day come, the day which follows it 
would find no army at all to supply. 
There are no alternatives but vigorous 
support or total non-support. Indif- 
ference is synonymous with disaster. 
Our countrymen overseas face enemies 
who have made a life profession of the 
bearing of arms. The men of our 



Secretary Baker at the Front 183 

country have been put there by the 
operation of the most responsive ma- 
chinery which a democratic people has 
been able to devise to record its own will. 
Once having put them there, half- 
hearted support on our part is deser- 
tion. 

They know that. No terror can be 
so haunting as the fear that the line in 
the rear may be wavering or doubtful. 

So it is that the jingle of our coins 
given here, and the hum of our factories 
speeding forward with redoubled effort, 
sounds to them in France as "The Bat- 
tle Hj^mn of the Republic." It is 
borne across the ocean as a benediction 
for those who must pay the last full 
measure of devotion ; and it carries, too, 
across the banks of the Rhine — there as 
a knell to those who hope that we may 
grant in grudging measure to our sol- 
diers. 



184 Secretary Baker at the Front 

I wish that he who is of faint heart 
might go up and down the length and 
breadth of France where the hand of 
America has touched it; that he might 
see his country's people streaming in at 
the western seaports by hundreds of 
thousands with a spring in their step, 
a swing in their stride, a light in their 
eyes. I wish that he who feared this 
nation had grown fat and flabby and 
afraid might see its sons Over There. 
I wish that he might see the revival of 
the heroic age in our history, the renais- 
sance from which the unborn years will 
number. 

Once he has seen those things, he will 
not be happy elsewhere. 

To-morrow, when the writing of these 
pages is completed, I shall take my 
place in the National Army, that I may 
get back to the growing point of the 
world organism. 



Secretary Baker at the Front 185 

For those whose place is here, the 
short way out hes straight ahead and 
through. 

For all of us alike, if there be any- 
thing in this land worth having and 
keeping, it will be saved most surely 
and speedily only when each of us 
throws upon the scales every particle of 
his strength and energy and resource 
and devotion. 

This America is worth it. 



THE END 






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